Through the Looking Glass
by BeyondFloating
Summary: Vlad is a haunted man. Never does it seem quite as literal as when a young mortal girl begins to appear and disappear from his castle unexpectedly and inexplicably. The mystery of who, and what she may be, lures him out from his solitude. But the castle is hungry, and so are those who dwell within. Vlad/OC
1. Chapter 1

**I, like most, couldn't help but watch the second season of Castlevania and want to write a new fic. So, here we are! Enjoy. :)**

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It would be easy to say that he was a haunted man.

If indeed, he was still a man.

There were many who would claim that he had given up all rights to such a designation many, many centuries ago. Countless now, even by his own standards.

Ghosts walked the halls of his castle, and even more so in the corridors of his mind. Twisting and endless as they may be, filled with the spectres of his lost loves, his lost lives…

He no longer paid any heed as they passed him in the great hall. Whether or not they were truly there, or merely projections of his ancient and hollowed soul, he could not say. He did not care. While they obeyed many of his generals and creatures, he held no sway over the spirits of the dead. So if they were truly the souls of his departed loves, his departed friends - he would be useless to speak to them or divine any meaning.

And so, he had come to ignore them. It was that, or go mad.

There were many who would claim he had already earned that designation many, many centuries now.

Vlad Dracula Tepes was a haunted man.

Now, though… it seemed that it had become far more literal than in his previous observations.

It was astonishing how moments of great import happen at the most unexpected times. The tales are told of astonishing bloodshed upon a field of battle or tense political negotiations in a throne room. Never does anyone speak of the turning of the tide occurring in a hallway.

But there, just outside his study, is where it began. That is where he first saw her.

A woman, clad in a dress in shades of colour like a peacock in blues and greens, standing and gazing up at a statue of a winged figure of death in an alcove. Her hair was chestnut brown and fell about her face in waves. The warmth in her cheeks gave her away as being a human. And stare as he might, she did not vanish.

Vlad was struck. He truly must have gone mad - to be hallucinating a mortal girl standing in his halls. None of his creatures had brought a living girl into the castle. Vlad would have sensed them in an instant.

And yet… there she was.

The girl turned to look at him. Her eyes caught the light and they were violet in tone. A rare tone in humans, he knew. They widened in shock, and she took a step back away from him in surprise. When she backed away from him, her arm caught a candelabra, swaying it on the stand. She let out a small, startled 'eep!' and caught it quickly to keep it from tipping over. She carefully set it back onto its legs and made sure it was stable before turning her attention back to him, as her priorities corrected themselves as quickly as they had shifted.

How thoughtful.

She was certainly not a ghost.

The girl smiled apologetically - nay, sheepishly - at him, before turning to flee. No. She would not escape. The girl turned the bend of an intersection in the corridor - but it made no matter. Vlad was far faster than a mortal girl could run. He disappeared from where he stood and reappeared, standing in the hall she had exited down.

There was no one there.

Vlad let out a startled grunt and whirled about to see where she could have gone. Not possible! There were no doors for a hundred feet. He could sense those who could paint themselves invisible. He smelled no magic in the air - only the sweet scent of a mortal woman. But the girl was not to be found.

Turning, he shook his head and began to walk from the hallway, his mind reeling for answers, but none were forthcoming, and he had no concept of how to even start. The girl seemed to appear from - and disappear into - nothingness.

Perhaps he truly now was losing his mind.

Unable to come up with any explanation for the impossibility of what he had just witnessed, he… merely continued about his evening. Another week had passed before it happened again. Before he saw her again.

This time, standing in his gardens. Leaning in to smell a red rose, a whimsical smile upon her face. If she knew of the dangers that surrounded her - of the hungry creatures that would devour her without a thought, she did not seem to care. Once more she was dressed in tones like a peacock, blues and greens and purples. Not in the expensive wares of a high lady, nor a pauper, either. A corset cinched her waist, keeping her 'appropriately attired' for a lady of the day - as far as he was told by his generals, anyway. Vlad had not left his castle in many, many years, after all.

Each time she moved, the colors of her dress shifted - layers of lace changing the mix of blues and greens and purples.

"You!" Vlad snarled, sounding perhaps a bit more intense than he had intended.

She whirled her head and her look of awe turned quickly into one of equal surprise and an edge of panic. She froze as if waiting to see what he would do.

"Who are you?!" Vlad stepped forward, and the demanding tone of his voice and his advance must have done the deed. She took heel and ran - ducking around a corner with no regard for her direction.

Vlad gave chase and as he once more caught up to where she had disappeared, she was… once more gone. But she was not there - and no footfalls betrayed her presence. Perhaps she was cloaking herself. Reaching out with his mind and magic, he scanned the area and felt nothing... she wasn't there. He let out a frustrated huff of air. All that remained was the fading scent of a human girl.

Vlad was a haunted man.

Over the course of weeks, he would see her. Standing in awe of paintings, or playing with the glass beakers in his laboratory. Each time he would catch her, she would vanish out from him like a ghost. She was no demon, no imp, no ghost - she was human. But how?!

The latest time, the seventh time he had seen her, had been on a balcony. She had been feeding pieces of what appeared to be raw chicken to one of the hounds in the courtyard below. She was laughing and smiling as if the creature beneath her was not some demon from beyond the veil. Something that would devour her as happily as it would the chicken she offered.

This time… she was cornered. This time, there was no escape. Vlad loomed in the doorway. He found his hands clenching into fists. She was frustrating. Whatever her mystery was, it was unwelcome! He did not want this creature flitting about his home!

"I will repeat myself but once more: Who are you?!"

The girl turned around with a small squeak and pressed her back up against the stone railing of the balcony. Good. She was trapped. Nowhere to run: no corner to duck behind, no statue or bookcase by which she could obscure herself.

"I don't mean any harm-" she spoke for the first time. Vlad watched her curiously - his own eyes narrowing. She spoke as if she were somehow the threat. How ludicrous. How naive.

"You move about my home as though you are a ghost. Yet your heart beats in your chest. What are you?!" Vlad demanded angrily and stepped towards her. He had long since become accustomed to using his height to intimidate those around him. It was efficacious, he had to admit. His appearance alone would strike terror into those who saw him. Especially this mortal child who stood before him - his little mystery. His little ghost.

"I'm nobody," she explained, her violet eyes wide but… curious. Eager. Afraid, but… it was not the all-consuming terror he had long since become accustomed to. "I'm sorry, I'll go."

"You will be going nowhere," Vlad snarled and stormed towards her, meaning to close the distance and snatch her arm in his hand, to wrench her away from the railing of his balcony and find his answers to her existence in his home, once and for all.

It was then, that the girl did the most unexpected thing. He had expected her to scream, to cry, perhaps even to fight. What he had not expected, was for the girl to leap over the edge of the balcony.

All at once, she tipped herself over the rail backward and plummeted over the edge and out of sight. Vlad rushed to the rail to grab her, to save her from falling to her death and the hellhounds below. But his hand grasped empty air. But not because he had been too late.

There was not a body on the stones beneath. Only snapping hellhounds, whining at their now missing meal. The girl had… once more vanished into nothingness. She was utterly gone.

What was this girl…? Who was she? How had she done this? What power did she have, that let her move about as though she were not there, yet left no trace?! Nothing in his library - nothing in the works he had read or studied - had any reference to any power such as this.

She was no longer a nuisance. Now his mind was set reeling over solving the mystery, even if he had no clue of where to begin. He only hoped that the girl was foolish enough to appear again, even knowing the danger she was likely putting herself in.

The good news was, the girl seemed to have no regard for personal safety.

The bad news was, she appeared to own two gifts. One, to disappear and appear from nowhere, the second, to annoy him to no end. Over the following weeks, she continued to haunt him. It was the only way to describe what was happening to him. Never two days in a row, but frequently - once or twice a week, even - he would catch sight of her, only to lose her if he came too close.

Vlad even tried cloaking himself in invisibility, but as soon as she lost sight of him, she would round a corner and vanish. Once, he swore he saw a playful smile on her face as she disappeared around a statue and evaporated into thin air.

Even his generals were beginning to notice.

"You seem… uneasy, my Lord," his eldest creature, Lyon, spoke from his side. Vlad had given up his normal respite in front of his fireplace, to stand to overlook the courtyard to his keep, searching the shadows for a sight of his little phantom. He had come to expect her everywhere, now.

Lyon had been with him, a loyal creature, since Vlad had turned him nearly two thousand years ago. He was the only remaining creature born directly of his own blood who had not lost his mind to madness. Instead, he had lost his heart to sorrow. A worse fate - one he shared, perhaps. Lyon was a priest, of all things. A contradiction, even as vampires were concerned. But a good friend.

"You should be glad I am anything at all," Vlad narrowed his eyes as he gazed down at his familiar home.

"It is good to see you up and about, I must admit," Lyon replied.

Often, his priest had come to his study to try and rouse him from his malaise. Few in these walls could understand what it was like to be so very old, to see time passing as years before him as it may as minutes for another. A life so very long… and so very empty of anything but death and suffering. It was easy to sink into the mire of the void that had consumed him.

Yes. Perhaps if his little phantom served any purpose - it was nice to have a mystery to untangle.

"I am faced with something inexplicable," Vlad muttered, half under his breath. "A puzzle I cannot seem to solve."

"I have faith you will solve it in time," Lyon replied, bowing his head. The man looked ever much like the statues in the courtyard below with his white hair and pale skin. "Perhaps, if I might counsel, that a different approach may now be warranted?"

"I have not spoken to you of the problem at hand," Vlad cast a narrow glance over at his general.

"No. But it does not matter. For if you find yourself at a dead end, then a change of tactics is the only solution," Lyon observed. "And with you… might I suggest… a gentler touch?" Lyon smirked, knowing very well how he teased his elder and sire.

Vlad could not help but grin in response at the goad, dry and lifeless as it may be. For not only did Lyon resemble the statues in the courtyard below - he emoted in quite a similar fashion. Vlad waved the man away, dismissing him from his presence. Lyon bowed his head low and turned to leave Vlad to his thoughts. Ones that verged on the border of obsession with his little ghost.

He stood there for many hours, thinking until it was nearly dawn. Just as the sun threatened to rise over the horizon, he turned to walk the corridors of his castle. It was in these early dawn hours that his home was at its most quiet. All creatures slumbered, even those who carried a schedule that followed the sun and not the moon. It was during this hour, that Vlad was never disturbed.

Well, nearly never.

Moments of great import should never happen in hallways.

There she was once more. The hallway was long and had no jutting intersections, lined in stone. She stood, marveling at a section of the wall that was framed as if it were to contain artwork - but instead revealed the ticking of gears within the wall. The castle itself was a great machinima, and it ticked and whirred like the beating of a great heart.

Caught up in watching its movements, she did not see him approach. He quickly worked his magic and vanished, turning himself invisible as he snuck up upon her, like so much prey. Still, she stood, marveling at the ticking machinations of the gears and sprockets and cogs within the walls of his home.

So small - so benign - so delicate she seemed. Vlad crept up beside her silently - his steps making no sound upon the stone floor. He was the vampire, after all. It would be so simple now to reach out and snap her neck upon her shoulders - to tear her head from the stump and be done with her all at once.

But there was a mystery to be solved.

And it struck him as… a waste. A tragedy to end her life, without knowing the answers. But she would not escape him this time. There would be no running from him now.

Vlad gripped her by the upper arms, swung her against the wall to the right of the cutaway and perhaps a little too hard. She let out a startled cry followed by an 'unf' as he pressed her against the wall, his hands gripping her upper arms as he allowed himself to become visible again. She was dazed for a moment from the impact against the wall - she was indeed fragile! That and the scent of her blood confirmed it.

She was human!

Vlad's moment to observe her unwatched in return vanished as quickly as it had come. She had regained her composure. "Shit," she stated quietly, amethyst gaze meeting his crimson one.

Vlad snarled down at her, his brow creasing as he glared at the creature in his grasp. She was warm beneath his hands. "I will have my answers now," he said in his baritone growl.

He had meant it to be a threat. He had meant to intimidate her. He was very good at intimidation. But instead, she looked… bored. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and looked up at him incredulously. "Let go of me, or you'll regret it."

Vlad laughed cruelly. He was so pleased he had caught his prize. "You threaten me? I do not think you are in the position to make demands."

"It's not a threat," she responded. Her voice was smooth. "It's a statement of fact," she snickered with a cheeky grin. "Let go of me or you'll regret it."

"I fail to understand what gives you any idea that you are in a position of power," Vlad growled low in his throat, his hands clenching tighter around her arms. Enough to remind her - but not enough to hurt her.

"Second warning. There won't be a third. Let go of me." Her voice was firm - but he could feel her shaking. She was slight of frame - he could snap her arms if he squeezed hard enough.

Vlad laughed again - and his laugh turned into a yell as his world… moved.

He fell. He fell from solid ground. He thrust his arms out to attempt to stop his fall and she slipped from his hands as he did. He watched helplessly as the world rushed upwards and in an instant, he felt his stomach lurch, tumble, and suddenly he was… still falling. But now from somewhere else.

Cold water met him before he could put together what was happening. He thrashed at the shock of it. It took him a few moments to finally gather enough wits to decide which end was up. He felt solid stone underneath him, and he pushed up, sputtering for air.

He was in another small courtyard of his home, several wings away from where he had just been standing, and now was unceremoniously in the fountain.

Vlad heard laughter from near him, and he lifted his head - his dark hair dripping icy water as he looked for the source. Of course, it was her. Of course, his ghost was mocking him now.

"My, you certainly flail about, don't you?" she teased him playfully.

Vlad growled - now he had been embarrassed. He hated that more than anything else in this world. He would not be bested by this weak, tiny human. However unusual she may be.

Flexing his magic, he raised himself up from the fountain and raced at her, leaving a trail of water as he moved. She swore loudly again before turning and running away through a doorway and into a room. She had a decent lead on Vlad, whose soaked layers of thick clothing were slowing him down, and it took him a precious second to catch up.

"Stop!" Vlad yelled. Hope lit up in him as he realized there were no corners for her to duck around - no way to hide his line of sight. The room she had run inside of, had no other exits. He would not come so close and be bested again.

She was ten steps ahead of him when... Vlad pulled up to a quick halt, almost staggering over himself as what he saw stopped him in his tracks. A black circle had appeared on the wall next to her. It started off small - but grew from a single dot to almost seven feet in diameter on the stone. It was that inkblot that he had seen when he fell! It was a hole. A perfect circle of nothingness. She barely glanced at him as she ran into the hole.

Vlad was not unaccustomed to portals - but they had an energy to them that this did not have. They took power and magic - a summoning of a source from deep within. She had merely created this thing as if from out of nothing! It was not possible.

He could sense a tear through space as simply as another could detect a light in a room. But this was not that. It just looked like... there was nothing there, a blackness greater than the deep of space. It not only didn't have a normal energy to it like his mirrors, or the curling energy of the smaller pass-throughs between corridors of his castle. It was nothing at all.

It was a hole in space.

That wasn't possible.

And it was closing.

The perfect black hole of missing space was closing as silently and as quickly as it had appeared. So Vlad did the only thing he could do. The only perfectly rational thing he could think of.

He picked up a gold three-armed candelabra from the table next to him and hurled it through the hole. The circle vanished almost immediately after the candelabra had passed through it.

And like the girl, it vanished into it silently like it was nothing. No crash from the room next door - nothing. Vlad rushed forward and placed his palms against the stone - but... nothing. Not even residue from what had happened. Power like that should leave a trace, but this was as though she was nothing but a phantom in his mind.

Frustration suddenly found him - he was so close to having his answers, and now he only had more questions. He snarled in anger and started slamming his palms and then fists against the stone until his hands ached. Resting his forehead against the stone, he shut his eyes and let out a shuddering breath.

Nothing that could be done about it now. Now, it was best to sleep. So he trudged, defeated, back to his coffin and did his best to stop his mind from reeling over the questions that refused to silence themselves.


	2. Chapter 2

Vlad clenched his fists at his sides.

No.

It was insulting, is what this was.

He had never felt such rage at an inanimate object, and yet...

Vlad had walked from his crypt the next evening and decided to retrace the steps of the night prior. He visited the fountain that she had unceremoniously dumped him into and then into the room through which she had vanished. Where he had witnessed the black hole in space.

The candelabra was back.

Vlad knew it was the same candelabra - it was particular and one-of-a-kind relic. And now... kind of bent. One arm of the candelabra looked twisted at an odd angle. He narrowed his eyes, and picked it up off the table by the center stem, and noticed a thin bead of glue seemed to be surrounding a crack in the bent golden arm. It seemed to be holding the broken arm onto its base. He tested the connection and let out a small 'hum' as the broken arm snapped off in his hands.

Odd. Very odd. It must have broken upon landing in its flight through the black hole - wherever it had been - and the girl had attempted to fix it. It was the only explanation for how it now found itself back in its home, in one piece, more-or-less. How perplexingly thoughtful of the girl.

Vlad used his magic to easily repair the damage to the candelabra - although despite his best efforts it still looked slightly off. No matter. It was of no importance. Vlad began to place the candelabra back on the table when a piece of white paper fell out from underneath it. The card drifted to the floor by his foot. Placing the candle onto the table, he crouched down and picked up the little piece of paper. There was handwriting there - small, and a little messy in its script, but perfectly legible.

'Hello.'

Vlad blinked and turned the card over in his hands. Nothing else. Just one word. He bristled needlessly at the dismissiveness of the statement. Did she not understand how important it was that he understands who and what she was?!

But no. The card just read... 'Hello.'

Vlad narrowed his eyes in confusion and frustration, and let out a wavering sigh. He wanted to crumble it in his fist, to hurl it into a fireplace. A thought occurred to him, somewhere in the depths of his mind. It was foolish - but worth a try. He summoned a writing quill and an inkwell, and dipping the nib into the ink, turned over the card, and wrote a response.

'Who are you?'

Vlad put the card back into the base of the candelabra - dissolving his writing instruments into thin air with a gesture, and shook his head. It was idiotic, and a lark, but he had no other options. Taking one more moment to stare at the candelabra as if it would start spouting secrets, he sighed and walked away.

Vlad forced himself not to compulsively check the candelabra - he forced himself to wait, like a child restraining himself from sweets. He waited until late that evening to finally pick up the candelabra and pull the card out from inside and found the same card. Nothing new. You are a fool, Dracula, he chided himself angrily. But yet, he did not crumple the card. No, he placed it patiently back inside the candelabra and replaced it on its spot on the table. He walked away, marveling at the disappointment he felt. Of course, she didn't return, you idiot, he scolded himself again. You have threatened her, chased her, and she has rightly run from you.

His mind still reeled and turned end-over-end, late into the day and until sunset. He found he could not sleep, and he was furious at himself for becoming so wound up in the mystery of the girl and her holes through space.

Vlad finally stood up and threw on a long robe. He would go for a walk, and try to clear his head. He would come up with no schemes or brilliant solutions when so sleep-addled and his mind was running wild. Walking down the hallway, he found himself drawn to that candelabra once more. Sighing, he cursed himself for the fool he was. Lifting it up, he pulled the card back out from its base and - it was different.

'Alice. You?'

He had asked who she was.. and, she answered. More-or-less. He blinked at it, lost again at the uselessness of her response. But, he had a name to attribute to the young girl with the peacock dress, at least. Alice. He summoned his writing utensils again and turned the card over and wrote his response.

'Vlad Tepes Dracula'

He thought for a long moment about a question to ask - something specific - something to answer his stream of curiosities and his need to understand. A flurry of words, of options, of paths and choices ahead laid out in front of him as he pondered what else to add to the card.

But nothing succinct came to mind. The card was too small for a long-winded reply. He stood there for almost a half an hour, thinking. He blamed his sleeplessness for his inability to form a cohesive question. But, it seemed she wanted to communicate. She had begun this - and was continuing it. So perhaps... Perhaps his answer was enough for now, he thought as he tried to console himself for his lack of words.

Vlad replaced the card and went back to bed. He didn't check the card again until dawn the next day - perhaps she would follow a pattern. And reaching eagerly - too eagerly - into the candelabra, he wasn't disappointed.

'A pleasure to "meet" you, Vlad.'

Alice used his first name, as though his title and rank meant nothing. As if she did not understand precisely with whom she was playing this strange and childish game. He gritted his teeth and narrowed his gaze at the impertinence. This little creature was sneaking into his home, escaping out from under his grasp, using an impossible form of magic the likes of which he had never seen before. She did not understand the magnitude of what she had placed before him.

All of the options, all of the tactics he could employ, rolled about in his mind in a tangled mess. It took many minutes for him to straighten them out. When they did, the words of his general came to mind. A gentler approach. He let out a small huff through his nose. This girl did not seem afraid. He was not luring a frightened animal from a corner with the promise of a soft hand. Taking pen to paper, he wrote his response upon the back of her card once more.

'You are trespassing in my castle, you realize.'

Leaving it there and returning at the same time the next day, he was not disappointed. A new card had taken its place, with her response upon it.

'I know. Do you want me to stop?'

Vlad shook his head and found himself smirking. No, Alice was certainly not afraid. It was refreshing if confusing and entirely unhealthy on her part. She knew precisely what she was doing and now engaged him in this repartee. Why? Why not run from him? Why play her part in this discourse?

Alice had asked him a question. It broke him of his thoughts as to the inspiration behind her willing interaction with him. Turning the card over, he wrote his response. It surprised him. But he had long since ceased questioning his instincts.

'No.'

It was honest. No, he did not wish for his little phantom to disappear from his home. What had begun as an annoyance and a nuisance had become a puzzle. One he found had started to occupy his thoughts - a welcome diversion from the consuming emptiness that held such sway over him. Another day passed, and another card took its place.

'Well, okay then.'

Vlad huffed a small laugh at her curt response. To be fair, he had not written anything else to her in his most recent reply. She had engaged him in this conversation - it was now in his court to continue it.

A gentler approach. Picking up his pen, he turned the card over and inked his response.

'I apologize for chasing you.'

Vlad was not truly sorry. But if he wished Alice to stay in one place long enough to discern her secrets, he would have to convince her he did not mean to tear her to pieces. Her response that he found the next day was strange and caught him off guard.

'I do not mind. It is a wonderfully fun game.'

Vlad felt his eyes go slightly wide at her words. A game?! This mortal girl thought he was playing with her?! Perhaps it was she who was mad. Either way, it seemed to be dismissing his chasing her as a joke - he bristled a bit at what he was sure was an unintentional insult. His pursuit was in no way fun or funny. Not to him, at least. Although, he was on the losing end of the 'game,' so perhaps he shouldn't be such a sore opponent.

'Why do you come here?' he wrote in response.

'Your home is astonishingly beautiful. It is a marvel, though perhaps a little morbid for my tastes. I suppose it can be forgiven, as it rides very much with what you are.'

Vlad held the card in his hand and ran his thumb over the text. His little phantom knew what he was…? Could she truly understand where she was trespassing? With whom she played her little game? He had assumed she was merely dangerously ignorant - a child in the woods, thinking the wolf that followed her was a friendly dog.

Alice had called his home beautiful and a marvel. That it was. He had become so inured to it, he often forgot how it may appear to those who step foot within it. Hallways that went on forever, impossible architecture, winding structures that could shift and change their positions on a whim. Many had lost their lives, tangled in its corridors and madness. And she visited it as a tourist.

Vlad's thoughts returned to Alice's strange power. To move in and out of the world as though she were passing through doorways. With no hint of power or magic within the action. How was it, his little phantom had come to own such a gift? How was it that she commanded such talents?

'I must know how you transport yourself.'

Another day, and another card. This time was more shocking than the last.

'All you had to do was ask.'

Vlad looked down at the card and couldn't help but feel a grin cross his face - finally, he would have his answers, almost three months after the girl had first appeared. Something caught his attention - an unexpected presence behind him. Turning, he visibly jolted in surprise at what he saw.

Alice stood before him, smiling up at him, her full lips painted crimson, amethyst eyes twinkling in mischief. She wore a heavy coat over her dress of shifting colors. Before he could react, a pair of gloved hands clasped the front of his cape.

"Best you hold on," was all he managed to register in his mind as he noticed the world disappear out from under him. The inkblot circle appeared beneath where they stood. He went to yell - to fight, maybe - but it was too late.

The feeling of falling gripped his stomach as the ground gave out under him to the hole of nothingness. As the room disappeared from his sight, he felt his stomach lurch in violent disapproval for what was happening. His mind spun and rattled.

This is what it felt like for others, he observed to himself dryly. To be transported about by the whim of another.

Falling through the darkness and the nothingness, Vlad did the only reasonable thing a man could do: he screamed.

Grass and dirt met him as he flung his arms out at whatever was near him - and he managed to groan as his head started to come to terms with the rest of his body. He was lying, face down, in a meadow.


	3. Chapter 3

"While the field does look quite delicious, I fear I will have to decline to join you," she said from near him, chuckling at his unceremonious position, face-down in the dirt and grass of a meadow.

"Be quiet," Vlad groaned from where he lay. His head was just starting to right itself. He pushed himself up onto his hands and stood, brushing bits of leaves and twigs off of himself. He picked some bits of grass from his hair that he could see. He stood up slowly, attempting to regain some semblance of composure. "You must stop dropping me on my face."

It surprised him, that he would talk so casually with his mystery figure - his peacock ghost. But it seemed casual conversation was the manner in which she preferred to engage. It at least did not scare her away.

"About the fountain - I'm sorry. But I really needed you to let me go."

Vlad looked up, pushing his dark hair from his face. Alice stood some thirty feet away from him, leaning up against a boulder. Her dress and heavy coat were the same shifting tones of blues and greens that she seemed to favor. The air here carried a heavy chill, and while his breath did not turn to mist in the cold temperatures - it never would again - hers turned a faint white cloud as it left her mouth.

She watched him, curiosity and wariness were written plainly across her features. Alice was a beautiful thing - likely to turn heads wherever she went. Seeing his studious and exacting glare, she smiled at him.

Vlad could use his magic to ensnare her. Attack her or chase her, as he had attempted before. But, to date, all such attempts had failed. He was ill-suited to catch a ghost, he decided. He would, for now, settle for this. He squinted up at the sky - and realized he had no idea exactly where she had brought them. "Where are we…?" he asked.

"I don't rightly know," Alice responded and looked around. "A few hours north of Moscow, perhaps. Judging by the temperature and the location of the moon and stars."

Vlad's eyes went wide. She had transported them hundreds of miles?! While he could translocate his castle, it took the power of an ancient and a great deal of focus and energy to accomplish such a thing. She had taken them here without even so much of a flicker of any of that.

But even in all of that impossibility, something struck him as too odd to not question. "You do not know for certain?"

"No," she replied and shrugged dismissively. "I saw where I wished to bring us in my mind's eye, and simply did so. I often do not know where I am going, only that I want to." Alice smiled playfully at him. "How else do you believe I wound up standing within your home? You are hardly on the map."

Vlad shook his head. "I have no inkling how it is you do any part of your apparent… gift." Vlad stepped towards her but stopped as she stiffened visibly. He stilled his movements, not wishing to scare away a creature that could run and leave him stranded here, a thousand miles from his castle. Vlad let out a small 'huh' as her ploy became clear to him - why she brought them both out of his home.

"What?" she asked.

"You brought us here, to ensure I would remain tacit in our conversation. I cannot very well scare you away, without being left so far away from my home."

"I'm sure you'd get back there faster than most."

"It would be an inconvenience nonetheless."

Alice laughed, a sound like silver bells. "Yes, here I am, threatening the great Vampire King with an inconvenience. I suppose that is all the best that any of us could muster against you, isn't it?"

Vlad smiled thinly at her playful repartee. "You are not wrong. So you know who I am?"

"Hard not to. You are a legend, and the paintings you have of yourself within your home do not make your standing a subtle assumption to draw," she replied.

An intelligent girl, then. Good. Questionable once more in her lack of fear of him and his home, but her decision was then made by either insanity or confidence, not stupidity or ignorance. Vlad straightened his shoulders and looked down at her studiously. "You are a human mortal girl, yet move about the world with a gift the likes of which I have never seen. What you do is impossible."

"Yes, I know." Alice folded her arms across her chest. Despite her casual demeanor, there was tension in her stance. She was attempting to hide how nervous she was. Yet, it was she who chose to be here - she who chose to enter in this discourse with him.

Vlad was struck at how rare an occurrence that truly was in his life. He moved towards her once more. When she went rigid and shifted, he stilled his approach a second time. He held up a hand. "I mean you no harm."

Alice eyed him warily. "The legends of you speak of a great deal, but one thing they do not say is whether or not you are a liar."

"You are the one who continues to trespass within my home, and now accuse me of such a thing? You are here by your choice, Ms. Alice. Not I."

Alice sighed and lowered her head. "Yes. You are right. Forgive me. I do not trust others easily, and this is not your burden to bear." Emotions played upon the girl's face quickly, and he was sad to see the wary amusement fade from her into a manner of hollow pain. That was an expression he was quite familiar with.

Vlad took another step towards her. This time, although she was visibly uncomfortable, she did not move to retreat away from him. She was still leaning against the boulder - an odd place to stand, if she was nervous of him, trapping herself against the stone. Although, when one can open up gates in space at will, perhaps she was as secure there, as with an open exit.

Certainly, he would have a harder time catching her by her means of travel, than by more traditional means. "You carry with you a gift that is rare and coveted. In fact, its reach is… unlike any that I have ever seen. I can move through space, but only perhaps within a mile. And I am ancient, my dear. You… I sense in you no magic. No source of power. How is it that you can do what I have witnessed?"

"You are not going to like my answer," she responded, a playful smile returning to her face. Good. He found he much preferred her impishness to her sorrow. "I do not know."

Vlad blinked. "You jest."

"I wish, but no. I do not have any knowledge of how I open such gates. I merely can. And always have. I think of a place… I see it in my mind and - I open a hole."

Vlad paused, thinking it over. "You do not know the source of your power." He believed her to be sincere. The look on her face told as much - he could sense a lie as easily as he could tell them.

"No, forgive me." Alice paused for a second. "And I will warn you - I am not going to let you cut me up to find out."

Vlad looked at her, confused - he had spoken of no such thing and did not even broach any subject of research. He was surprised as he saw real fear on her face. "I was not implying… Ah." It clicked together in his mind. "I am not the first to pursue knowledge of the source of your gift."

"No, you are not," Alice said with a bitter snort. She fidgeted with a bracelet around her wrist and looked away from him, the fear still written on her features.

"I will not harm you," Vlad insisted, and found he meant the words. He did not intend to do this girl any violence. He stepped towards her once more.

"Once more, I wish I could believe you," Alice responded, and shut her eyes. "But you are correct. I am here of my own volition, and should not accuse you of such falsehoods. So, for the time being, I shall hold you to your word. Even if you are the King of the Night."

Unbidden, Vlad felt his shoulders slump as he sighed. "Yes." He did not know what else to say. He would not apologize for his nature - he resented it well enough most days. "Then why speak to me at all?"

"I am not sure. You are interesting."

Vlad raised an eyebrow. "Interesting."

Alice laughed and shrugged dismissively again as if to try and belittle the significance of her words. He realized that she was attempting to make light of their interactions - was seeking to make them seem less than they were. But she had sought him out - she could have fled his castle and never returned, and left him alone with his mystery. But she had begun the conversation, albeit through notes left in a candelabra base. She finally spoke, after seemingly looking for words and failing. "We had a game and I think perhaps we were both enjoying it."

"It was no game," he replied. He bristled at the notion that she would dismiss him as a toy.

"To you, maybe," she said with a mischievous grin.

Vlad sighed once more. This was not getting him anywhere. The girl had found him interesting. She was engaging in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with him, despite expressing concern that he might win. He looked up at the pale moon and then back to the young girl. He needed answers. But he needed not to scare her away. "Your gift is unnatural. Uncommon. It is against the laws of all that I understand. I do not think you understand the ramifications of what it is you can do."

"I already said I was sorry and I am not going to apologize again for being me," the girl snapped. Her words rang uncomfortably similar to his own thoughts moments prior. "What comes next, a lecture that I am not 'good enough' for what it is I can do?"

Once more she presumed an attack where he had intended none. It was the demeanor of someone accustomed to such a lash. "No, my dear."

As if sensing that she had once more scolded him for a wrong he did not commit, she sighed and shook her head, and looked up at him with embarrassment in her eyes, silently apologizing. Vlad responded by taking another step closer to her. Now he found himself five feet away, and his nervous little phantom had yet to run from him. Though she looked no less wary, it was promising.

"Why were you chasing me?" Alice asked him curiously. "Was it because I was trespassing? There are many who live in your home - dozens upon dozens of vampires by my count, and hundreds of creatures or more. You do not seem to mind the company."

Vlad smirked. "I am not often haunted by a mortal girl. You are a mystery."

"One you want to solve?"

"Yes."

Alice went silent for a long time. As if debating something, as if on the verge of an admission. Her amethyst eyes glittered with wariness, and she looked away from him once more. "What I am haunts me, as well." It was said with darkness and a heavy burden. The girl had suffered for her gift, it seemed. "I… also came to the castle when I heard it was a source of knowledge. I thought perhaps if I could find the answer to what I am, it was there. I had exhausted all other options."

Ah, yes. There were only two reasons that anyone ever approached him. To kill him, or to use him for his expertise. "That is why, then, you engaged me in conversation."

"No. I could have come and gone from your library without you ever noticing. I have, in fact, dozens of times," Alice smirked at him playfully. "You have a librarian already - one I have already met. He has been more than helpful enough to render your guidance more danger than it was worth in such pursuit."

Vlad watched her, confused an unsure as to what to say. He supposed it was to be expected that she had passed through his walls without his noticing, but the thought had not occurred to him. But that she had spoken to others in his castle without his knowledge?! It bristled him unexpectedly, as though he were somehow jealous.

But she had pursued this conversation for sake of him, alone? It was a rare compliment. He was not often the recipient of such things. "I admit I find that my librarian assisted you without informing me rather disquieting."

"I paid him. Quite well, I might add," Alice said with a laugh.

Vlad shook his head. Yes, that sounded true to form for the old man. "I will… speak to him."

"Oh, please do not get him into trouble on my account," Alice said to him with a surprisingly warm smile. "The doddering old man meant well and there was no harm in it."

"Very well," Vlad took another step towards the girl. "I assume you made no headway in your research?"

"None. Even with the Librarian's assistance in translating the works I could not read, there was no reference to anything that gave me any leads."

"So now you have turned to the source for guidance," Vlad assumed.

Alice watched him curiously for a moment, studying him. "I told you, I found you interesting. My desire to speak with you has nothing to do with my gift or answers to its source. But you have a hard time believing that, don't you?"

Vlad grit his teeth. He had revealed that part of himself unwittingly. The girl read him far too easily for his liking. "You presume too much, Ms. Alice."

"Yes, I suppose I do," she smirked. "Frequently and adamantly, or so I am told."

He watched her for a long moment, thinking over the strange little marvel before him. It was odd, but his mind had already been made up on the matter. "Allow me to assist in your research. It seems we are of an equal mind in discerning the nature of your talents."

Alice chewed on her lower lip for a moment and turned her purple eyes from him once more. "I am not sure. I will warn you, I am not… a yielding individual. Particularly in such matters. I… I do not know why I am showing you this," she complained to herself as she began to roll up the sleeve to her coat, exposing her arm. The long lace sleeve of her dress follows, baring her arm to his view. Vlad saw a thin scar that ran up her arm from the back of her wrist to her elbow. "I have been a science project before. I have no desire to be one again."

As she went to withdraw and roll her sleeve back down, Vlad took her wrist in his hand, stepping in to close the distance between them. Alice pulled in a gasp of surprise but did not pull her hand away. His actions surprised him, as well, as he ran the fingers of his other hand gently up the scar, tracing it.

It angered him.

To think that some manner of puerile, infantile waste of flesh would do such a deed in search of answers that were not nearly so tangible as to be found buried beneath skin and bone, sent his blood boiling. Such needless suffering caused by ignorance.

"Who did this to you?!" he hissed.

"He is dead," she replied, her voice small for the first time since she had spoken to him. Caught off guard by his touch, it seemed. "I killed him. I dropped him somewhere far worse than into a fountain, believe me."

Vlad chuckled and found himself pleased that the young girl carried such conviction. He released her arm. "I have no need to resort to such childish methods. If you are a partner to this inquiry, I see no need to force such things upon you."

Alice smiled, seemingly reassured. "We have a deal, then." She stuck her hand out to him, a beautifully mortal gesture that reminded him of her youth. He took it, turned it, and leaned down to place a kiss on the back of her fingers, as a gentleman should.

It was a fanciful gesture on his part, one he found he had no desire to deny himself. And the blush it brought to her cheeks was divine. You are a foolish old man, he chided himself as he straightened up to his full height.

Alice fished a pocket watch out of her coat, trying to find some means to distract herself, perhaps. She let out a 'huh,' and sighed. "I fear I must go. I have an appointment to make in a half an hour, and I must go change before I go to work."

"What is it that you do?"

Alice smiled playfully up at him. "I am contracted to steal things for those who pay well."

Vlad laughed. Yes, he supposed that would be an easy task when one could transport themselves about the world at will. "I find myself in need of guarding my possessions, then?"

"Oh, no, I don't steal for fun. Just for hire," she teased back.

"Mmhm, a discerning bandit. I see," he feigned disbelief.

"I am not a bandit! It is very different. I am not some highway robber."

"Oh, do tell. Explain it to me."

"It is entirely different. It-" she stammered, unable to find a line of thinking on which to take purchase. "Never mind," Alice folded her arms across her chest, disgruntled, but conceding the argument. He did not try to keep his triumphant smirk off of his face. "Do not look so smug, or else I will leave you here."

Vlad bowed his head and let his smirk fade into a smile. "As you wish, my lady larcener."

"I am not going to live this down with you, am I?"

"I think not."

Alice sighed and shook her head, but the playfulness had returned to her eyes. The flickering mischief had faded after the reveal of the scar upon her arm. Now, it was there once more, and he was delighted to see it return. "Well, then, let us go." Alice gestured to the empty space next to them in the field.

Vlad pulled back in surprise as a small black dot appeared hovering in space next to them, and widened up in size until it was nearly eight feet in diameter. It was pure, and utter darkness - passing into the same nothingness he had seen before. He reached out to touch it and felt the empty air. No power flickering beneath his touch. He walked around it slowly, observing it from all sides. It looked almost drawn onto the world. It had no thickness - in fact from two angles he could not see it at all.

"This is… impossible," he murmured, astonished. His mirrors could do a similar trick, but it was stationary and difficult to move. And carried with it an energy like a rushing current underneath. It was not like this.

"I know," she replied, and watched him pace about her gaping black hole in space with fascination and… a little bit of pride, perhaps.

He reached out his hand to touch it again, and as he put his fingers through the void, he felt nothing. No change or rush or current of power. "And if I were to step through…"

"You will be right back in your castle, where we left off."

"Even if I went without you?" Vlad did not like the thought of being cast out into the void and likely torn into nothingness, all things considered.

"Mmhm," she confirmed. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and leaned back against the stone. She was not like the ladies of the court, veiled and too concerned with the meaning of pleasantries - and yet was not as gruff as women like Carmilla, far too concerned with winning arguments. Alice seemed… overly casual in all things. Forthcoming. Unassuming. It was curious.

Vlad continued to press her for questions - dismissing her desire to keep to a schedule. She was providing him answers, and that is what he so desperately wanted at this moment. "Do you will it to a location before you summon it? Could you change the destination after opening the hole?"

"No. I think of a place, I open it, and it's like that until I close it. I can't do two at the same time, either. But I can do them within split seconds of each other," she answered his question before he asked it. "I open them from small to large because it's less startling for people… I don't need to. I can just blink them into being," she volunteered.

Vlad was deeply pleased she was willing to share with what she knew. Unfortunately, none of it that pertained to the source, but… any information is valuable. He walked around it one more time. "I see…"

"Well, go on then." She laughed. "I promise if you step through and don't, well, fall through like an idiot, it feels less weird."

"Perhaps if you would stop dropping me…" Vlad grumbled. He did not like being called an idiot, even if his previous travels were less than graceful.

"Yes yes, be bitter, it's fine," she said, still grinning.

Vlad shook his head and stared at the hole. "How do I know you will not drop me into a raging volcano, or a sunny desert?"

"Because you're interesting," she said tiredly with an eye roll as if dealing with a frustrating child.

Vlad put his hand through the hole and felt… no burning on the other side. In fact, he felt… nothing unusual at all.

"You want me to trust you, Vampire King? So… trust me."

Vlad blinked and pulled his hand back, looking to her. That caught him off guard. Something about how she said it… something about her asking him to trust just felt… something about it brought forth an unexpected emotion in him. Sadness, almost? Alice looked as confused as he felt. He swallowed down whatever strangeness she had just caused, nodded curtly, and resumed his normal, uncaring mask. "Tomorrow, then."

"Tomorrow."

Vlad stepped through the hole, and felt a falling sensation - or a rushing sensation - he wasn't quite sure. But in an instant, he was now standing in the room where they were before. She was right - when you don't fall through, it isn't nearly as disconcerting. His stomach still lurched uncomfortably, but it was gone a moment later.

He looked back at the wall where he had just passed through - and saw nothing. He ran his hand along the stone. He should be able to feel some trace of power, some remainder of magic but… there was nothing there.

He sighed.

Tomorrow.


	4. Chapter 4

There was no doubt in her mind: she was an idiot.

Of all the stupid things she had ever done - of all the times she had decided to play with fire - this time took the cake. This time was by far, the most idiotic choice she had ever made.

Stepping through the hole in space into her London flat, she went through the frustrating process of turning on a few of the gas lamps to be able to see in the darkness of the rented apartment. If London was a 'rustic' experience for her, there was no chance she was going to suffer through staying in an inn somewhere in the Carpathian mountains. Besides, it not as though travel were taxing or time-consuming. She could be staying in America and it would be the same difference to her. But, London was quaint, and so here she was.

Shrugging out of her long coat, she slung it over the back of a chair. Sitting down onto the sofa, she went about the business of unlacing her shoes and kicking them off. With a sigh, she laid down on her back on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling.

Lord Almighty, she was an idiot.

Alice lifted her head as there was a small 'mrrt' and a black, fluffy, long-haired cat landed on her stomach. She smiled and lifted her head to pet the animal who nuzzled happily into her hand. "Hi Loki," she greeted the animal, who purred, let out a small happy squeak, and began to turn about on her in circles, rubbing up against her hand and begging for more scratches. "Did you have a nice day? My day was… interesting, to say the least."

Alice talked to her cat.

She had no one else to talk to, after all.

A shame the animal couldn't respond. It would be nice to have a real conversation with someone, for once. Alice was crushingly lonely. She knew that it was her weakness, and knew that may be a large part of the reason it tended to lead her to make stupid, idiotic, childish, moronic, self-destructive decisions.

Such as entering in a research arrangement with the King of Vampires. Alice sighed and leaned her head back on the pillow, and shut her eyes, still absent-mindedly petting her cat. "It went alright," she told the cat, once more, as she had no one else to talk to. "He… isn't what I was expecting. I am not sure what I honestly was expecting, to be fair. But he laughed. He smiled. That caught me by surprise, I suppose."

Loki let out a small 'mrrt' and flopped down onto his side on her stomach, stretching out and reaching his black paws up towards her face. She smiled down at him and scratched under his chin, as was his request. "I know, I know… I shouldn't get in the mix with dangerous people. I've done this kind of thing before, and we all know how it ended. But I don't know. Something about him was… disarming. There is a sadness there in his eyes. I expected cruelty - all the stories… What I saw was something else."

Loki purred.

"I'm going back there tomorrow. I should run, I should stay far away. But… who am I kidding?" Alice chuckled. "This is me, after all. Not to mention, he is… certainly does not look how the Belmont writings would lead you to believe, either. If all vampires are as beautiful as he is, well, I understand the allure now," Alice finished with a smile. "I suppose the vampire hunters didn't want anyone to get the wrong ideas from their work."

Alice stood up and picked up Loki as she went, slinging him onto her shoulder. He was happy there, and draped himself around her neck, purring and stretching out. Walking to the coat she had draped over her chair, she fished through her pockets for her small notebook and pencil. Picking up the gas lamp, she headed into the bedroom, Loki jumped from her shoulders to the padded surface and began to make himself at home as she readied for bed. Tomorrow would be a long and interesting day, she was sure.

Changing into her nightgown, she slipped beneath the covers and flicked through her notebook to the last page with writing. Doing a score line underneath the last block of text, she began to write.

London, March 4th, 1866. Loki in flat on 5th street. Went to Transylvania castle. Traveled perhaps to Siberian mountains. Returned Vlad to castle. Returned to London, March 4th, 1866.

It was so easy to lose track if she was not careful. So easy to forget what she had done, where she had gone - where she had left her poor cat.

Turning the key on the gas lamp, it faded and extinguished. The smell bothered her head, but there was nothing to be done about it. Lying down, she tossed her notebook and pencil onto the bed beside her. It was not like it was going to get in anyone's way, after all.

When her dreams came, they were of the Carpathian mountains.

* * *

Vlad had thrown himself head-first into research the moment he awoke. It was invigorating to have such an endeavor - such a project on which to feast his mind. For too long, he had wasted away with nothing on which to focus, save for the few tepid and uninteresting hunters who may find their way through his doors.

Alice was certainly no hunter and she had not walked through his doors. She was, in all ways it seemed, unique. An impossible gift, coupled with her knowledge of his nature and his history, and yet she remained unafraid. Understandably wary, but unafraid. It either spoke of great confidence in her own ability to defend herself or an acceptance of the danger that he brought. Either was equally likely and in all things, he suspected a mix of both was the true culprit.

He had taken over part of the library for his own uses. Clearing out all others and the tables so that he may spread out the books and parchment. His sudden and unusual passion, sadly, did not go unnoticed.

"And do we have a new hobby, now? Are we soon to go to war once more, or do you merely have an itch to scratch?"

Carmilla.

"Leave me be, Carmilla," Vlad responded, turning his red gaze up at the austere woman. She had betrayed him more times than he could count. It may seem odd to an outsider, that he allowed her within his walls. But in his day, there were few who had not turned against him several times. Carmilla was power-hungry, always desirous of that which she did not have. He could not fault her for her nature, any more than he could fault birds for flying, or wolves for hunting.

"It is just so rare to see you away from your study, brooding," Carmilla smirked at him cruelly, although there were few times that was not the case that she wore such an expression.

"It does not concern you."

She ignored him, as she was want to do. Long, red fingernails turned a book about on the table to face her, and she perused the text with the expression of utter boredom. Already detached and uninterested with the subject before gazing upon it. "Translocation of matter? Can you not already do this well enough at will?"

"It does not concern you, Carmilla," Vlad warned dangerously. "Now begone."

"Hmph," she huffed and turned away, walking from the table towards the main corridor. "Very well. I merely wished to say it is so very nice to see you out and about. Even if it is merely within the walls of your castle." Carmilla added sardonically with a dismissive wave of her hand as she walked away.

Vlad sighed darkly and turned his attention back to his books. He sat in the chair, tapping his finger on the wood surface of the table like the tempo of a metronome. Hours had passed, how long precisely he could not truly say. But he had made it through several tomes (with little progress) before he realized that someone else was tapping in time with him.

Ceasing his movement, he turned his head. There stood Alice, leaning up against a bookshelf, watching him. She was smiling at him, a warm glint in her amethyst eyes, chestnut curls falling in long coils around her face. Her dress was of dark blue lace, with green underneath. It was a beautiful piece, even if he would have preferred her without a high collar and long sleeves. It hid her skin from view through the heavy lace - likely to hide her scars, he observed with a twinge of regret. "Good evening," he greeted. You look lovely, he finished in his mind. His comment came unbidden to his mind. It would be unwelcome to her, he was certain. He pushed up from his chair to turn towards her and bow low at the waist.

Alice chuckled at his gentlemanly gesture. "I would curtsey, but I fear I do not know how," she admitted and walked towards him.

She seemed more at ease around him this evening. Good. He smirked at her lightly as he raised up from his low bow. "That is quite alright. You are not noble-born then, I assume?"

"No. Hardly. An orphan, in fact. My family died when I was very young. I went to the streets as soon as I was able. My gift made me a problematic teenager. I was not missed," Alice grinned in the memory of what must have been years of mischief.

"Mortals are ill-equipped to deal with anything they do not understand. It is one of their many weaknesses," Vlad replied. "That you suffered is of no surprise to me."

"Oh, I was fine. I made out far better than most," Alice shrugged dismissively and walked to one of the chairs of the table, leaning her gloved hands upon the carved back, "My talent made it so I never went hungry, and rarely went cold. I could pass through walls and into safe spaces and escape any trouble in which I found myself. I was lucky."

"I assume you had much trouble to avoid?" Vlad could not help but let his smirk bloom into a small grin. If the child in any way resembled the woman, he could almost picture the devilish imp and the mayhem she caused as a fledgling with such an untethered gift.

"You cannot even imagine," Alice laughed and ran her fingers through her long, chestnut curls, pushing them away from her face. She did not wear her hair up, which was unusual for the times - or so he understood. He had not set foot outside his home for any length of time in many, many years.

"I have questions for you if you would like to begin."

"Sure, but," she paused. "Do you eat food? Can you, rather? I assume you do not need it to survive, but…"

"I can, yes," he answered, unsure of where this line of thought was traveling.

Alice smiled in a cheeky grin - one that seemed to come reflexively and quickly to her features. He enjoyed it, he could not complain. She gestured her hand and a black circle appeared in space next to them. "Come on, then."

Vlad looked at the hole, and found himself becoming inured to the bizarre nature of her gaps into nothingness. But the request confused him. "Why?"

"Because I do not think you get outside enough. And besides, here, we can be overheard or watched," Alice shook her head. "My answers are for your questions, no one else."

Vlad would bristle about the comment of him being unwilling to exit his home, but it… was true. And her assertion that they may be intruded upon was a valid one - Carmilla had demonstrated that but moments prior. Letting out a small huff, he walked towards the empty hole in space.

Alice held out her hand to him. Meaning to take his, and lead him through. Vlad stared at her blankly - not out of disgust or lack of desire to take her hand - but simply out of… unadulterated confusion. He did not know what to do with such a gesture. Was she concerned for his safety? Did she think he would fall, or become disoriented, perhaps?

Seeing his hesitation, she bit her lower lip and went to lower her hand. "Sorry, I-"

Vlad reached out to take her hand before she could remove it fully from his grasp. But he did not yet quite know what to say. This was all he could muster for the moment. Perhaps reading his expression, or perhaps understanding the confusion he likely felt, she merely smiled gently up at him, and without saying another word, led him through the hole in space.

The rushing sensation tugged at him, as he felt overturned and jostled. But travel in such a manner was beginning to become less unexpected, and therefore less severe, in its unsettling properties. Perhaps he would have to show her what it was to be turned into a swarm of bats someday soon - turnabout being fair play and all. The thought brought him no small amount of enjoyment.

When he saw where they were, he took a moment to absorb the sight. It was a cliffside upon the ocean. Green stretched out in all other directions, but what he could see of the sheer drop, the cliffs were pure white. He had seen them once before, many, many hundreds of years ago.

"The cliffs of Dover. I thought perhaps we would be uninterrupted here." Alice walked away from him, heading towards the edge. There, ten paces away, he saw items laying in the grass. She had prepared ahead of time, it seemed. What an odd girl.

Vlad followed, with little other option but to do so. She sunk down onto a blanket on the grass and gestured for him to sit across from her. "Unless the Great Lord Dracula is too fine to sit on the ground," she teased him. "I am but a simple orphan girl, after all."

The wind coming from the ocean whipped his dark hair around his face as he observed her. He let out a small huff of a laugh through his nose and sat down across from a basket that looked to contain some fruit, cheese, a bottle of wine, and some glasses. An odd girl, indeed. Odd, but… he found himself deeply amused. Something he had not been in a very long time. "Are you courting me, Ms. Alice?"

The girl burst into laughter, and he found himself smiling along with her. She reached for the wine, but he took it from her before she could go about opening it. He was many things, a fiend, a demon, and a monster - but he was a gentleman.

"So what are your questions, Lord Dracula?" Alice asked. Pointedly ignoring his question, he observed.

He laced the wine glasses between his fingers and began to pour. Red. A sarcastic observation or simply a choice, he did not know. "Please. Call me Vlad. Anything else, and I fear you are merely being pedantic."

"What gave it away?" she teased. "And you needn't refer to me as 'Ms. Alice,' while we are on the topic."

"I do not know your last name," Vlad observed.

"I don't have one," Alice answered with a shrug. He handed her a glass and she swirled it for a moment before sipping it. "'Alice' is likely not even my real first name. I gave it to myself when I left the orphanage. They called me something else, I don't even truly remember what it was."

"How old are you, then? Forgive me. It has become difficult for me to judge such things."

"Twenty-seven," she answered. "Born and raised in New York City." Alice paused once more and smirked at him. "America."

"I know where New York is located," Vlad grumbled. "I am not a reclusive shut-in."

"Is that so?"

Vlad narrowed his eyes at her tease and she laughed at his expression. It was not an unkind sound - merely enjoying his consternation. Vlad huffed and turned his crimson gaze out to the ocean. "How old were you, when you first demonstrated your unique trait?"

"Six. Perhaps five, I'm not sure. It began merely just opening holes to pass through walls and the like. It wasn't until I understood my dreams more fully that I understood my range was far, far larger than that."

"Explain."

"I dream of places. I see strange wonders or the countryside - oceans and islands, volcanoes and icy tundras. I see cities, I see people… I dream never of myself, or of events like many people may do. I always dream of places. It is in those dreams, that I see the places to which I can travel. Even if I have never been there before," she explained, looking off into the ocean thoughtfully.

"Such is how you came to be within my home," Vlad surmised.

"Exactly. I saw a room filled with gears… a towering library with a hundred thousand books. A forge, burning away beneath the building. Demons and monsters, the likes of which I had never seen before. And you, sitting in a study before a fireplace."

Vlad watched her for a long time. The way she said it was somehow… wistful. How he wished to reach out to touch her, then. To trace his fingers across her cheek. To feel the mortal warmth of her skin beneath his cold touch. But he refrained - to do so may spoil their… amicable working relationship.

"Did you know of me before the vision? Or after?"

"After. I never dream of places that do not exist. So once I knew such things were possible, I went looking. I have seen other such fantastical places, dealt with many creatures that were not human. I travel in odd circles, as you can imagine, by the benefit of my eh… gift. I went to see an old friend. He knew quite a good deal about you, I'm afraid."

"Who is this 'friend' of yours?" Vlad asked, dreading the response.

"A man by the name of Hellsing. A scholar and a… well, a hunter. He has hired me many times in the past to procure items for him or… to procure his safe exit from difficult situations," Alice chuckled.

Hellsing. He did not know the name - he would have to send someone to discover details, the moment he returned to his castle. Dracula let out a small 'hum' in his throat. "You do more than simply steal, then, my little thief?"

"Any use someone may have for a gift like mine, I provide," Alice smiled at him, and sipped her wine again.

"For a fee."

"I have to make a living." Alice sat back then, leaning back on her elbow, stretching her legs out in front of her. She was such a casual creature. Vlad was not accustomed to such mannerisms, especially in his presence.

He had the urge to move towards her - to touch her, to lay her onto her back and kiss those crimson lips. To see what his impish little phantom may do with such an unexpected gesture. He hungered for her. For her blood, yes, of course - but more interestingly, for the rest of her as well. He was not one to deny himself the joys of the flesh - eternity was long and dull enough as it was. But once more, it may derail his discovery of the source of her talent. Vlad sipped the wine. It held little interest for him, but it was that, or he would drink of her, instead.

Hm. Now that he thought of it.

"Ms.," Vlad began, then paused, correcting himself. "Alice," he spoke. "If I may make a request. One you are welcome to refuse." He turned his crimson gaze to her. "I find it truly difficult to believe you are human. I wish to confirm the matter. I have a method by which to do so. It will allow me, as well, to sense any magic you may possess. But…"

"But…?" she prompted in his silence.

"You may find the method… unsettling."

It took her a moment to discern his meaning, but when she did, she blushed and her amethyst eyes went wide. "Oh. Oh. I. Well, I…"

Her blush was beautiful, the way it colored her cheeks. How he wished to touch them. "You needn't say yes. I do not wish to put onto you anything to which you do not agree."

"What happens? If… You do that, what happens?"

Vlad smirked. "You will feel no pain."

"That's not what I mean," Alice watched him nervously, but there was a flicker of something else in her eyes. Curiosity, perhaps? Oh, darling little phantom - what a tempting thing you are. "I mean… Will you be able to go fishing about in my head?"

"There will be a bond between us for a time, yes. I will be able to hear the thoughts you feel upon the surface. But I cannot enter your memories. It will fade, as your blood is consumed within my system, in a week or two. The effect is not permanent."

"Hear my thoughts? Oh, hell. I don't… I don't know about that."

Vlad chuckled. "I cannot dig through your deepest secrets. Nor will I. I will ignore the link as best as I am able." The fascinating child was far more concerned with the privacy of her own mind than whatever physical damage he may cause her. She did not even ask if she would be corrupted and turned into one of his ilk.

"You think it will help?" Alice asked warily still.

"It will either confirm or deny that you are human. It will allow me to discern whether or not there is some deeply hidden magic at work within you. So… yes." And how delightful it will be to taste you upon my lips, he added silently.

Alice muttered something quietly and downed her glass of wine. Vlad could not help but chuckle. "Very well, fine," she said with a small sigh. "What could possibly go wrong?"


	5. Chapter 5

His little phantom proffered him her wrist, holding it out to Vlad over the basket between them. Her amethyst eyes flashing in nervousness and excitement all the same. Oh, yes, he supposed he _could_ drink from her in such a fashion. But the look on her face - one of eagerness and fear - was too intoxicating. Too tempting.

Perhaps it was time she understood fully with whom she was so candorous. She had met the gentleman - now it was time she met the monster.

* * *

Alice squeaked as Vlad suddenly moved. He was fast - _far_ faster than she was expecting. He vanished from where he was sitting and before she could really realize what he had done, she was lying on her back on the grass. His hand was against her shoulder, and he was looming over, lying next to her and over her, crimson eyes boring into hers.

"There is the proper look of fear to which I am accustomed," he said with a small sneer. As he talked, his fangs extended before her eyes, dangerous and flashing in the light of the moon.

Alice's stomach twisted into a knot. "You… you startled me, is all, I didn't expect- I thought-" her voice caught in her throat in a gasp as he slid his hand from her shoulder to her cheek, trailing his fingers along her jawline.

"I will not take your wrist. Not unless the lady insists. It is far too… impersonal for my tastes." Vlad replied, his voice a deep purr in his chest, a low rumble as he watched her, his dark hair falling down about his face in black tendrils.

She needed something to hold onto. Her hand twisted in the grass at her side. Seeing her gesture, he let out a small 'hm' in his throat. His hand slid to her wrist and lifted it from the blades of grass and held it instead to his chest. "You are afraid."

He was cold - there was no warmth that came from his touch or his body. Alice knew there wouldn't be, but still - feeling it now, was something else entirely. "Of course I am," she murmured in response, searching his features for any sign that she should run - open a black hole beneath them now and send them both somewhere else.

Vlad looked pleased. No, not pleased - _proud._ As if she had impressed a tutor. "Good. I would worry for your sanity if you were not."

"Plenty of other reasons to worry over my sanity…"

Vlad left her hand on his chest, wandering his touch up her arm. It made her shiver beneath him, even through the long sleeves of her dress. He was studying her every move - reading into her every response. She felt naked beneath him, pulled open and exposed. It made her blush, that exacting gaze, even more so than the slide of his fingers.

"You could flee," he observed. "You could fight. You could refuse me. You have done none of these things. Is your desire to learn of your past so strong, I wonder?"

His hand was now at the back of her neck, undoing the covered buttons of her lace dress. The collar went up to the underside of her chin - yes, she expected he would need to undo a few to reach his goal. Alice shivered again, her hands twisting in the fabric of his vest.

No. Her desire to know was _not_ that strong. But there was a burning desire in her now for something else, entirely. She suspected he knew precisely why she lay there, surrendering to his touch as he gently folded down the collar of her dress, revealing the skin of her throat.

"If you take too much, we'll be stranded here, remember…" Alice said, avoiding his question. Her poor dodge did not miss him, and he smirked down at her, a playful glint in those hungry, crimson eyes.

"You needn't worry. I have restraint. I thought perhaps to hypnotize you, to keep you still and unafraid as I do with those I feed from in such a manner. But no… I see I have no need. Do you _trust_ me, my little phantom?" he pondered incredulously down to her as he trailed his fingertips along the skin of her neck slowly, running his thumb along the line of her jaw.

Alice knew she must be twenty shades of red at this moment, how flushed she felt as his chill touch. She had to fight to keep from leaning into his caress, to keep from pressing his palm against her cheek. He would think her a harlot, or worse, for certain. It took everything in her power to keep from leaning up and closing the distance between them and _kissing him._

He was terrifying. He was dark and powerful, and she wanted to taste it. So no, it wasn't 'trust' that kept her lying obediently here in the grass, with a creature like him, looming over her. Not _exactly_.

Alice would never trust again, after all.

"No," she admitted to him truthfully. She wouldn't lie to spare his feelings - a creature like him, it would be an insult more than anything else. Besides, the way he was staring _through_ her soul, she knew he must see it plainly. "It's not that."

Vlad grinned - pleased and proud once more. He seemed content with her answer and did not press her for details - _thank Christ._ Perhaps he already knew. Perhaps he already understood. He shifted, and Alice went rigid once more as he slid the arm he had been leaning on underneath her shoulder. Leaning on his elbow, his forearm was now across her back, his fingers curling around her opposite shoulder. It raised her up off of the ground those few inches.

Alice could only cling to him, her body tense and taut as he gently tilted her head back with his other hand. Slowly - so very slowly he moved now, letting her walk this path with him willingly. Giving her every opportunity to turn away, every second she needed to protest. To say 'wait,' to fight, to run…

She could not find the strength to do any of those things.

It would have been a mercy to hypnotize her, to give her the shelter of an inability to choose. Like this, she was his willing partner. It was torture, and… it was glorious. Alice let out a wavering breath she hadn't realized she had been holding, accepting what was about to occur.

Vlad let out a thoughtful 'hmh' in his throat, a sound she felt as a rumble more than she heard, perhaps. He needn't say what he had just seen as some of the tension and fear left her body. Cradled and caged in his arms as she was, he would have felt it. She begged him silently not to goad or tease her over it - she felt ashamed enough already.

He took pity upon her and remained silent. But instead, he pushed upon her resolve once more as he leaned his head down to her. His hair brushed her cheek and it made her shiver once more, as he gently pulled the lace away from the crook of her neck.

Alice turned her face away from him, in towards the crook of his elbow of the arm underneath her. Turning away from his face, and… welcoming him in.

Vlad let out a breath from his nose at her action, and he stilled for a moment. As if she had caught him off guard in her action. "It will not hurt for long," he murmured to her, a deep rumble of a whisper.

"It's okay," she whispered back, and let her eyes drift shut. "I am accustomed to pain."

Another long pause, before he did the unexpected. Lips pressed against her cheek by her jawline in a gentle touch, and Alice nearly writhed beneath Vlad at the shiver of electricity it sent through her. The feeling of cold breath against her skin was not as unpleasant as she had thought it may be. It felt like a relief, with how heated she was.

His lips left her for a moment before she felt them on her neck. He kissed her there once, before she felt him open his mouth, felt the cold breath against her skin that this time made her shudder. But the anticipation did not last for long before she felt the sting of sharp teeth as they pierced her throat.

* * *

Oh, how she lay beneath him, so willing… so beautiful. Chestnut hair splayed out into the grass like a halo of curls around her head, amethyst eyes seeking his.

She was no trembling waif. She was no farmer's daughter who would cower from him until he showed her that he could be gentle. Nor was she some repressed, sheltered Lady, discovering the world of dark desires for the first time.

Alice _knew_ what he was. Knew _who_ he was. Knew the danger, the darkness, the pain and sorrow, the torture that he could bring to her. And still, she opened her arms to him. But why…? She did not trust him. She said as much, and he could see her honesty upon her. The girl would not lie to him, and for that, he was eternally grateful.

What was it? A desire for knowledge? No. There was more to it than that. There were flickers of shame and embarrassment that mingled with her fear and anticipation. As if she were… _shy_ in the face of some other manner of desire. How delicious it was to watch her struggle within herself, even as he could smell the blood that rushed between her veins, pushed forward by the quickening tempo of her racing heart.

When she turned her head away from him - not in disgust, not in fear, not in rejection of his beasthood - but instead _to welcome him…_ It had taken his breath away. It was as though she had reached her hand into his chest and squeezed his heart where it lay.

 _No one welcomed his bite._ No one not already corrupted or broken. No one not in his thrall or tangled in his webs of manipulation and lies. She was her own soul - her own mind. He had not twisted her about until she knew not which way was up until she sought shelter in his arms.

 _Oh, what a marvel you are, my little darling,_ he leaned in to kiss her cheek. It was an instinctual gesture. One he would not deny himself. How warm she was beneath his cold lips. Suddenly he wished to hold her against his body, to take her, to feel that warmth surround him. To see if she would _truly_ welcome him - to test how deep her desire and curiosity for the beast in him truly ran.

It was that image in his mind, of her twisting in the sheets beneath him, crying out in pleasure and agony as he showed her all that he was capable of, that drove him forward. He felt his heart lurch in his chest as it began its sick, pallid tempo in his own anticipation of what was to come. For a vampire's heart could beat - but only under certain circumstances. This, being one of them.

He kissed the skin of her throat, hot and pulsing beneath his cold lips. Still, she did not fight him. Still, Alice did not cry for him to wait, or to take mercy upon her. When he spoke to console her, to tell her that the pain would not linger, the words he received in response brought him such unexpected pain and… such heated desire, he could not quite fathom it at first.

 _He had to have her._

Her warmth filled his mouth. Vlad would not spill a single drop. Nor would he feed like a ravenous animal - he would take his time. He would make this _linger._ He would let Alice feel what it meant to be fed upon by a creature such as he.

And oh, she tasted like heaven.

* * *

It stung. Alice winced beneath him, her fingers tightening in his vest, as the pain lanced through her. But she did not fight against it - or him. The pain was simply just that, nothing more. Alice was no stranger to the sensation. She had expected this - it was not a surprise.

And as he had promised… it passed.

What came in its stead, _was_ a surprise.

It was a throb, a tempo that filled her body rushed over her like the waves of an ocean, pulsing and deep. It was her heartbeat as he drank from her, and it was the feeling of his lips around the wound he had made, pulling from her body, the suction as he sipped from her, slow. Gentle. Tender.

If this is what it meant to die, let it happen like this. A gasp left her as she writhed beneath him, not in pain… but in what was rampaging through her body, unbidden and unexpected, but not _entirely_ unwelcome.

Pleasure.

There was a deep purring sound in his throat, like that of a great cat or a monster. He held her tight, his grasp on her shoulder cinching to hold her, to keep her from twisting out of his arms. His other hand was at her hip, fingers twisting into the fabric of her dress as he held her still. She did not realize how badly she must be squirming beneath him.

It was not until she felt the touch of silken tendrils that she realized she had moved one of her hands to tangle in the hair at the base of his neck, both at once holding on for dear life, and holding him to her - wanting more.

Vlad moaned against her skin at her gesture, the deep guttural and inhuman purring in him growing louder as he moved over her more fully, pressing his body against hers as she lay in the grass, pinning her with the length of a thigh and keeping her still. His hand, freed from her hip, went instead to caress her side, sliding up her body, as if wishing the layers of fabric of her dress were not in the way.

But he did not increase his tempo - he did not drink faster, or harder, from the wound on her neck. He had more restraint than she did, it was clear.

As soon as it had begun, it was over. Where he had clamped his mouth over her throat, he left it, and she felt the cool night air wash over her skin. Alice whimpered as she felt his tongue slowly run along the tender and sensitive wound, lapping up whatever he had spilled.

Slowly, the throbbing tempo resided. Slowly, the feeling faded and left her lightheaded, reeling in the wake of such sensual pleasure just as much as the blood loss. But even that was beginning to clear, moment by moment, as she came back down to earth from wherever he had just put her.

Vlad lited his head from her as if knowing she was returning to her senses. He looked down at her, his hand against her side stilling. Alice managed to turn to look up at him, her amethyst eyes finding his crimson ones.

What she saw there surprised her.

She had expected the austere look of a man proving his point. Of a monstrous tutor who had shown a child how dangerous it was to play with fire. And perhaps, there was some of that flickering at the edges - a strange and belligerent distaste of his own nature.

Or perhaps a look of triumph, a grinning fiend, the devil himself, a beast with sated hunger, laughing at her foolishness. And perhaps there was that too, a darkness, a deep joy in the act he had just performed.

What she saw was… passion. Desire. _For her._ No one… no one wanted her. Not for _her._ For her power, she was hunted and chased and tortured and broken - but never for _her._

Alice cupped his face in her hands, and leaning up, tasted her own blood upon her lips as she kissed him.

* * *

At first, he froze.

He had expected regret: the shame that follows a drunken evening's questionable companion.

He had expected fear: the realization that he was a monster from the depths of hell.

He had expected many things. Confusion, shame, hatred, rejection.

When Alice touched his face, in that barest instant of time, Vlad thought perhaps she would strike him. Anger would have been understandable, given what he had done. How deep he had driven himself into her soul, drinking of her body.

Vlad could control the totality of his bite and what it would render onto his victims. He could turn it into little more than a transaction if he wished, and leave them to suffer in the pain of the wound. It was like the poison of a viper's bite, the hypnotic blanket he could wrap around those from which he fed. But at her gasps, at her whimpers, at her furtive and passionate moans, he had let her feel the full breadth of his kiss. Feeling her writhe in bliss against his body had been too tempting a lure to deny himself.

So when Alice's warm hands touched his face, Vlad expected her to strike him. He had gone too far, presumed too much as he had pressed himself against her body, wanting to feel her against him. Wanting far more than he was allowed.

But when her lips touched him, he froze. He did not, quite simply, know what to do. It was not until she pulled away from him, her lips stained crimson with her own blood and the look of utter humiliation in her beautiful purple eyes, that he realized how she interpreted his locked and wide-eyed inaction.

His little phantom was worried _she_ had overstepped. That _she_ had presumed too much. In the face of the defilement he had just paid her body, he could feel her remorse and chagrin at her kiss, burning away in his beating heart as if it were his own.

They had a link, now, as he had warned her. But there was no way she could fathom the reason behind his shock. Of _course,_ she read it as reluctance on his behalf.

How could she ever understand… no one had _ever_ kissed him first?

Vlad closed the distance between them once more and returned the gesture with a fervor that made her gasp through her nose in surprise. He could taste her blood upon her own lips, and that alone would be enough to drive him mad.

The tension in her limbs melted against him as he kissed her, passionate and slow, wanting to savor this. Wanting to savor _her._ The warmth of her hand had returned to his cheek, running the pad of her thumb along his cold skin as he would devour her like this a second time if he could.

When her hand slid limply from his face - when the returns of his gesture ceased - he pulled away to look down at her unconscious form. Overwrought, it seemed that had finally been too much for her.

Vlad tilted her head against her shoulder and laughed.


	6. Chapter 6

Alice woke up to the smell of dirt. Well, to the smell of dirt and of roses. Blinking her eyes open, it took her a long moment to realize what she was lying on. It was soft fabric, but firm beneath. It was from that which came the smell of roses. Faint, sweet, but not cloying. Her hand was curled next to her face, and she spread her fingers out, tracing the edge of the trim of an expensive vest.

Oh.

She lifted her head and rubbed her eyes. They were no longer outside or in a field. Alice realized with embarrassment she must have passed out. Her cheeks lit up crimson as she remembered exactly what had happened the moment _prior_ to her loss of consciousness.

Well, _shit._

No taking that back, she supposed.

They were in a cellar, of some kind. That explained the smell of dirt. Faint light streamed in from the wood slats overhead. She woke up, lying with her head on Vlad's chest. His arm was around her, and looking down at him, he seemed to be sleeping.

The sun had risen while she was out. He had to find them shelter, and so he took them here. Wherever 'here' was.

His features were smooth and untroubled. It wasn't until that moment she realized the constant burdened look he carried on his face, the creases it brought to his brow. There had been such sorrow there, as well - an ache that had lived there so long that it had turned to stone. He was old, she knew from Hellsing's research. He had held countless names over countless centuries - Mathias, Gabriel, and Vlad. Who knew how many more he might have held in his time.

Alice was not a fool. She knew with whom and what she lay beside, here in this dusty cellar. She knew who she had played with, who she had sought out. Who she had let feed from her. Touch her.

By all the gods in heaven and hell, he was handsome. Beautiful in more than just looks. How he was so willing to smirk, to laugh, to feel. She expected an austere statue, a cruel and unflinching monolith. What she found instead was a man who felt ancient - but played her foolish games and entertained her as she had wanted to drink wine with him on the cliffs of England.

Her curiosity of him was turning into a small, budding affection. That was dangerous. Far more so than the desire. How badly she had wanted to feel him touch her - to feel his bite. To play with that dangerous fire. Perhaps there was no one more dangerous than the man who lay beneath her now, asleep. The first of his kind. King of the Night. Demon on Earth.

 _And I straight-up went and kissed him,_ Alice almost laughed at herself. At how foolish she was - at how _stupid_ an act that had been. And here she was, wanting to touch his face. Wanting to lean in and kiss him, those pale lips. _And holy shit, I want to do it again._

"Well, what is stopping you, then?" Vlad spoke unexpectedly.

Alice shrieked in surprise and jolted, drawing a deep laugh out of him. Crimson eyes, lidded and heavy, met her gaze. She went to shift away from him, but his arm tightened, keeping her against his side.

"Sorry, I…" she blushed. "I forgot you can… hear my thoughts, now."

"Only the ones you project. And that was loud enough to wake me," he teased, smirking up at her, his voice tired.

"Sorry," she apologized again quietly, swearing at herself in her head for her idiocy. Then, she realized he could likely hear those as well, and tried to clam them up. _Think about anything else, you moron!_ She hollered silently and groaned in frustration as she knew he could hear _that,_ as well.

Vlad laughed again and reached up to stroke the backs of his fingers against her cheek. "Calm yourself. It is quite alright." His crimson eyes drifted back shut. "Unless, of course, you regret your choices."

"I regret that I passed out," Alice muttered, then realized how that sounded, and at his deep chuckle, she sighed. "You know that isn't what I meant." She meant that if she had stayed awake, they would be in their respective homes, not asleep in a basement of an abandoned home.

How did she know that was where they were? Perhaps the street went both ways.

"I know," Vlad responded, amused. His hand slid to tangle in her hair, and he drew her closer to him. This time, he wanted to kiss her. Alice smiled and met his embrace. It was tender, gentle - and assuring. Hardly the moment of passion from before. That felt like _real_ affection. But it couldn't be…

Alice was astonished. Caught off-guard. That was far more strange to her than anything kind of physical desire, or moment of abandon. Sensing her confusion, he placed his thumb against the hollow of her chin, just below her lower lip. Crimson eyes met hers once more, as he looked up at her. "I do nothing I do not mean," Vlad murmured up to her, and traced the line of her lip with his pointed nail. "Now shush, and rest… We have many hours more before the sun sets."

He pulled her down to meet his kiss once more. Alice let herself sink into it, let herself accept it for what it was. Alice was not used to affection. The few times in her life she had felt it, it had been a lie. She was more wary of his kindness than his violence.

Alice _understood_ violence.

* * *

What a forlorn creature Vlad held in his arms.

He heard her wariness echo in Alice like the peal of a bell. Heard her thoughts simmer upon the surface. More afraid of his affection than the pain he could bring. _For she understood violence._

The painting of the woman was becoming clearer to him, more so now as her blood ran through his veins. And oh, what vision it was turning out to be. An impish creature, mischievous and playful, masking a lonely and empty heart, ringed in bruises of pain.

She was, indeed, human. And paid such cruelty by her own kind to leave her as such. How unkind had the world been to her, to make a monster such as he, the safer port?

When she had woken from her slumber and thought him dreaming, he heard her thoughts whisper into his own. Thoughts of his beauty - reflecting upon the burden and sadness he carried, and how now he seemed so removed of them in his sleep.

There was much sympathy in her thoughts. How she marveled at him, over his history, over his willingness to… feel. Not until she had discovered her desire to kiss him, did she consider the imprudence of her actions the evening prior. But it was losing the fight to her desire to kiss him.

How wonderful to watch her struggle with her thoughts, now that he could hear them. There was an odd anachronism to her - she spoke differently than the voice he heard in her head. The voice in her mind was casual and crass, where she was not nearly so to such a degree.

It was rare to hear such a dissociation between the mind's voice and the spoken one. It confused him. But Vlad did not hear dishonesty in her - not a lie, per se. But what _was_ it?

Even as the painting of the woman filled, it left far more questions begging to be answered.

Alice was mortal. She was _human._ He tasted not a trace of magic in her blood. She was no witch, no sorceress. Her talent, like all things about the girl, seemed inexplicable.

But there was one thing he knew for certain.

At this moment, with her warmth against his side, as she nuzzled her head into his chest, he was content.

* * *

When they woke, she had found herself shivering against him. He had no body heat to help keep her warm, and the cellar of the abandoned home did little to help. Instantly, he became deeply concerned. Standing up, she found her teeth chattering.

"I am a fool," he murmured, as he took off his long cape and pulled it around her shoulders. She might as well have been wearing a curtain from Versaille, there was so much fabric relative to her frame. "With the bloodloss you suffered, and now this…"

"I'll be fine," Alice chuckled and tried to dismiss his worry. "I'm far tougher than that. I've spent nights out in the cold before."

"Regardless, you should not stay this way." Vlad sighed and laid his palm against her cheek. "Are you well enough to bring us to my study?"

Alice leaned her head into his touch without thinking. Even though he was frigid - oh, hell, how nice it felt. "Yes, it's fine. I have to be far more 'out of it' before it is unsafe to travel."

"Hm," Vlad said ponderously. "I do have more questions for you about such a regard if you do not mind. But come. Let us get you to a fire before we begin."

"That sounds amazing," Alice said with a chuckle. "I do have to get back to London today to feed my cat, but… I suppose I can spare some more time." Besides, she found herself… honestly enjoying his company. What a slippery slide on which she had found herself. Gesturing, she opened up a gate beside them. She took his hand from her face, if reluctantly, and went to lead him through the hole.

He pulled on her hand and stopped her. Alice looked up at him curiously. He crooked his finger under her chin and tilted her head further up. Leaning down, he kissed her, and she could not help but sink against him as he did. But there, once more, rising to the surface, were the doubts.

Not ' _if she, should she,'_ doubts. No, she had none of those. These doubts were worse, far deeper and far more poisonous. ' _Why would he? He doesn't. He can't. I'm not-'_

' _Enough.'_

That was not her. That was _not_ her voice inside her mind. That had been _him._ Vlad stepped into her, wrapped an arm around her, and pressed her up against his chest. His height meant he had to crane his neck down to deepen the kiss.

' _No more of such things. I will not abide by it.'_

He could speak into her mind, apparently. Oh, charming. He continued to 'speak,' even as he wound a hand into the hair at the base of her neck.

' _No more shall I listen to such doubts from you, or you will tempt my anger. Do you understand?'_

 _I'm sorry,_ she thought back at him, even as he kissed her insistently, matching the tone of the voice inside her mind. Giving her no room to argue. No room to maneuver.

Vlad broke off the kiss slowly, leaving her breathless. Her hands had tangled into his vest once more, and he looked down at her with a small smirk. Alice's heart was pounding in her ears, and she took half a step back away from him to clear her throat and try to straighten herself out.

A long, pointed nail tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "So very bold, and yet… so shy. How delicious a combination," he teased. "Do not second-guess my intentions, my dear. You see them plain for what they are. You can hear them, as well as I can."

Affection, desire, curiosity. Vlad was right - she could hear them.

It stunned her for a long moment. That he would find her… more interesting than anything other than just an experiment. A riddle to be solved, or a tool to be used.

"I warned you once. I will not do so again."

Alice knew she felt the same towards him. If she turned away from his kindness - his sentiment, she would only be returning to the loneliness. She didn't want to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. She had seen too many people fall into that trap.

Reaching down, she took his hand once more and smiled up at him faintly. She was still adjusting to this 'link' between them. "Come on. I'm freezing. … And starving, but really, mostly freezing," she dodged having to muster a verbal response.

Vlad chuckled as she led him through the empty gate in space beside them.

* * *

The world swirled around him even as did his thoughts inside his mind. His study greeted him. With a flick of his wrist, the fireplace burst into flame. Alice eagerly walked to stand beside it, holding out her hands to drive the freezing cold from her fingers. She looked foolish, standing there in his cape. Foolish, but endearing.

The doubts that he heard inside her mind had broken his heart. _Why would he want me? Why would he want to touch me? Why would he feel such tenderness towards me? I'm nothing. He's a god. He wants my gift, not me. Like all the others._

Such self-loathing… such crushing self-doubt. Feelings he echoed in his soul, sentiments he recognized as he would himself in a mirror. He had tried to kiss them away, to assure her that no, the budding affection he felt for his strange, charming, impish little phantom were real. Not some ploy in order to secure her talents.

 _What have they done to you?_ He wondered. Quiet enough at least that she could not hear him. Or so he thought. The furtive glance she shot him at his silent pondering gave him pause.

"I will tell you. Just… not today," she said to him quietly. "I'm not nearly drunk enough to tell you that story."

Vlad chuckled once. "That is fair. I-"

"My lord?"

An unexpected figure stood in the doorway to his study, nearly blotting out the full height of the frame. Lyon, the priest.

* * *

Alice saw the tall, ghostly figure in white. A vampire whose skin was barely a shade darker than the suit of jet-white he wore. A collar of a priest at his throat. She had seen him before - several times, in his Cathedral.

Ice blue eyes met her amethyst ones, and both sets went wide. Alice turned to flee - about to open up a black gate in space. She was going to run. A hand caught her shoulder, stopping her, but not grabbing her.

"No. Do not go." Alice looked up at Vlad. He stood near her, looking down at her intently, his hand resting on her shoulder. He was not grasping at her arm, not blocking her path. He was asking, in his own way. "Lyon means no harm to you."

"It is _you,"_ Lyon said from the door.

Vlad turned to look at the priest in the doorway, his silence demanding an explanation from the priest. Alice couldn't help but blush, embarrassed.

"I thought perhaps I was going _mad._ I thought perhaps the end of my mind had come. And it had taken the form of… her. Flitting in and out of shadows like… a ghost," Lyon explained. "I was unable to track her, unable to _find_ her. Yet, there she was."

Vlad burst into laughter. A deep, full-chested laugh of great amusement. His crimson eyes sparkled in the humor of the moment as he looked down at her. "I see I am not the only one you have _haunted,_ my little spectre!"

"... I suppose, yes, I… he saw me a few times," Alice provided shyly and smiled faintly over at Lyon. "Hello. My name is Alice. I'm sorry if I bothered you."

"I am merely glad I have not lost my sanity as of yet," Lyon stepped into the room and shut the door to the study behind him quietly. "It is… I am confused as to how you eluded me, Ms. Alice, but… if you are here with him, then I see I am not the only one."

Alice realized she was still wearing Vlad's cape, and she blinked, blushing crimson once more. She took it off, and folded it up in her arms, and draped it over the back of a nearby chair at a desk by the wall. "Your cathedral is just so beautiful. I love stained glass, and I wished to see them all. I have been coming and going from the castle for several months. No, you are not the only one I… disturbed in my adventures," Alice said as she smirked at Vlad.

"I take it she is no threat, then, my Lord?" Lyon asked Vlad.

The vampire king laughed again, though not nearly as amused as before. "She is no threat. You can be positive of that. For now, she is… my guest, here in my home. Free to trespass as she wishes."

Alice smiled warmly at him, flattered at his comment before she smirked. "It is not like you can _stop_ me anyway."

"Precisely. So you might as well have my blessing."

"Your _blessing?"_

"I am the Lord of this castle and all who dwell within these walls. And while you are here, yes, I am Lord of even you."

"Oh, _are you_ now?" Alice laughed. He looked as though he meant it, his dark features drawn in seriousness. Yet, his eyes glittered, revealing that he was goading her on, playing with her temper. "Pah," she turned towards the fire and held her hands out once more in front of the flame. She didn't realize how _freezing_ she had been.

Lyon looked as though he had no concept of how to follow what was transpiring in front of him. He cleared his throat, drawing Vlad's attention back towards him. "Forgive me, my Lord, but I did not come here for… our ghost. I came in search of you, for… you were missing. I have passed this study many times, and could not find you. You were nowhere to be found, this past day. Now, I… find you here, with her, and… I am quite lost."

Vlad straightened his shoulders, drawing to his full height, looking quite like a regal king in his garb. Honestly, she preferred him without all of the fabric of his cape. It showed the cut of his shoulders and his enticing physique, without hiding it all behind that dark silk.

' _You forget to guard your thoughts, my dear.'_

Alice blushed hard and turned her back to the conversation, swearing at herself silently.

Luckily, Vlad was too busy to answer Lyon to tease her. "You are correct. I was not in the castle."

"Where… _were_ you, my Lord?"

"Dover," Alice answered without turning, grinning. "England."

"Wh…" Lyon paused, unable to finish.

"Alice, as you have witnessed, can pass freely through spaces at her whim," Vlad provided. "In short, she does not know the source of her gift and has come here for assistance. She provided me with a demonstration of her gifts, but we became distracted and I was forced to sleep through the daylight hours."

"Distracted…" Lyon repeated, both flat and knowing at the same time in his delivery.

"Yes, Lyon. _Distracted,"_ Vlad said, his voice becoming a low and angry growl. Daring him to question him further. ' _Foolish priest - scolding me as if he is the father and I the child, simply because he feels no desire and knows not what he is missing!'_

Alice tried not to laugh. Those were not her thoughts and they didn't sound like they were meant for her.

Lyon seemed to understand the meaning. "Forgive me, my Lord. I am glad you are well. I became worried when we could not find you. I will inform the others you were merely on a jaunt outside the castle walls. I will leave you to your… distraction. It was a pleasure to meet you, Lady Alice."

Alice turned her head to smile at him. "You as well." Lyon bowed his head to her, and she thought she might have seen a ghost of a smile on his face as he left the room, closing the door behind him. "Was he just giving you hell for sneaking home like a teenager after curfew?" she asked Vlad where he stood, clearly fuming at what had just transpired.

Vlad growled and clenched his fist. "Insolent priest," he complained in a snarl.

Alice laughed at his annoyance, at how clearly perturbed he was to be teased in such a way by one of his subordinates. "Sneaking out with a _girl_ , no less… What a scandal," she goaded him back for his comments from earlier.

She shrieked as he grabbed her wrist and yanked her towards him, sending her staggering into his chest. Alice could vanish through a hole - drop him through one back into the fountain, perhaps. _If_ she believed he actually meant her harm. Maybe it was the link between them, now that he had drunk her blood. But she wound up, seated on his lap, in a great wingback chair in front of the fire. He had planted her atop him, straddling him and facing him.

His hands settled on her hips, as he watched her, amused and hungry. "I dislike interruptions. I dislike more to be _teased."_

"Oh, well, then we should cease our arrangement at once. I fear you will not get very far in my presence without being tormented," she smirked at him and sat back on his thighs. "I thought you had questions, didn't you? This does not look like _science_ to me."

"Science comes in many forms," he purred, his hands slipping slowly up her sides and behind her, meaning to undo the buttons to her dress.

 _Not yet, please,_ she asked him silently, leaning in to kiss him. An apology as much as it was anything else. He let out a small 'hmm' sound in his throat and settled his hands back at her hips.

' _As you wish.'_

It took every part of her to push down the reason why. To take it and put it into a dark box and shove it underneath the furniture of her mind, so that he could not see inside. So that he could not see the reason _why_ she was not ready to sleep with him. Oh, how she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to see what he was like, to taste him, to feel him.

But there was a dark secret in that box and she was not ready to let it out. Not now. Not today. So she hid it deep, distracted them both with her kiss. Thank all the gods in heaven and hell, it seemed to work.

When she finally broke the kiss, she was breathless. "Is this how you usually interrogate your science projects?" she asked him with a faint smile.

"No. But you are a far cry from a toad in a jar," he teased her.

"Well. I am glad that you have _some_ standards, at least."

"To which of us was that directed? I cannot tell which of us you were attempting to rile."

Alice let out a thoughtful 'hm.' "Both."

"You are an odd child, my dear Alice."

"You have _no_ idea." She grinned at him and ran her hand through his hair - combing it through the dark tendrils. He let out a pleasured groan and leaned his head back into his chair, his eyes slipping shut. He looked to enjoy it so much, she kept it up.

"Well, ask your questions - or can you not focus right now?" Alice prompted him playfully.

"Mmmh… My questions can wait…"


	7. Chapter 7

Vlad had felt Alice shut him out of her thoughts like the slamming of a proverbial door. When he had made motions to remove her dress from her - to fulfill the desire they _both_ so strongly held for the other - Alice had gently turned him away. But the reason as to why - she had violently and abruptly held from him.

Whatever the secret may be, it was a great, dark gateway she had closed in front of him. It was a place in her mind he, nor anyone he suspected, was welcome company. He understood.

What a curious creature, his little peacock ghost - his little mystery. They had enjoyed each others presence for another hour, with him peppering her with questions and her providing answers. She was forthcoming, honest and casual with him. He kept his questions benign, and avoidant of what he suspected was the root cause of her rejection of his advances: her scars, and the man who gave them to her. He kept his questions to her gift, her childhood, the business contacts she maintained.

It seemed she held a decent knowledge of magical artifacts and a far higher than average awareness of the true sciences. She knew _of_ the 'dark arts,' even if she professed to have no talent in them. Her clients paid her to steal much more than just gold bullion and jewels, she claimed.

More than once, she launched into a regaling of some adventure of hers, and he found himself rapt in interest. She was an entertaining storyteller, witty and amusing. She was, he found, utterly disarming. It did not help his burgeoning desire for her.

Alice had left for the evening, to tend to her animal and to other business matters, pledging to return on the morrow. It left Vlad several hours to sit and contemplate her, and her secrets. He was no closer to discerning the source of her talents. But he was far closer to securing _her._ Keeping Alice from fleeing him, and his studies. It was an important first step - to ensure that his focus of study did not vanish.

Vlad truly was the master of condoning his decisions 'after the fact.' He smirked to himself. It had been many centuries since he found himself fond of a mortal, let alone a mortal woman. Alice was inexplicable and unexpected in all things - most of all, her reactions to him.

They had spoken of his past, as well. She knew he was ancient - far older than the legends of Vlad Dracula might betray. She knew the name Mathias Cronqvist and Gabriel. To her credit, she did not pry to ask how old he _truly_ was. Vlad had no issues speaking on the subject of his true age, but she did not seem to wish to open doors into his past. Likely out of respect to her own that were still shut to him, he imagined. How very thoughtful of her.

A knock came on his study door. "Come in," Vlad prompted. He sensed the intruder for who he was, the moment before he stepped in. "Welcome back, Lyon."

The study door closed behind the priest. "Forgive my intrusion, my Lord."

"As always. What do you need?"

Lyon was silent for a long time. Vlad knew what it meant, after so many hundreds of years in the presence of his _only_ remaining direct fledgling. It meant the priest wished to ask after a topic that he deemed likely sensitive but found himself intractably required to pursue regardless.

"Go on, Lyon," Vlad prompted with a heavy sigh.

"It is… about Ms. Alice."

"She prefers you forgo the 'Ms.,'" Vlad provided, deciding to ignore Lyon's leading statement. The priest was fishing for information, hoping to avoid having to voice his curiosity aloud. Vlad would give him no such mercy.

"I am not the only one who has seen her. I fear she has sparked some interest in the others. A strange mortal girl, able to move about at her will, and now…" Lyon trailed off. When Vlad did not speak, he was forced to finish his thought. "I find her in your presence. Wearing your cloak, no less. I worry if the others get wind of such a development-"

"They will what, Priest? Lodge a formal complaint?"

"I fear it will draw undue attention to her," Lyon finished. "Her unusual talent and your apparent interest may be a dangerous combination."

Vlad sighed heavily and shut his eyes, resting his fingertips against his temple and his cheekbone. The priest had finally reached the point of his preamble. As irritating as it was, the priest was not wrong in his observation. Yes. Those who dwelled within his castle were often found bored and wanting for excitement. An unusual girl such as Alice, one who had earned his attention, would certainly spark murmurs and whispers and schemes.

"I would be wary of letting her roam your halls unchecked," Lyon provided.

"I do not believe I can stop her," Vlad smirked despite himself. "Not without finding means to restrain her movements entirely. Such is a drastic step I have no desire to take. But I will warn her, nonetheless. Your words are not without merit, Lyon."

"Thank you, my lord. I simply do not wish to see her become… embroiled in matters with which she cannot contend."

The idea of one of the others enticing her into their grasp hit him. The image of one of his more _gentle,_ approachable, younger creatures luring her in so that they may taste her, as he had, made him clench his grip into the arm of his chair. Vlad was startled by his sudden jealousy. He was not an envious creature by nature. If one of his conquests desired a night or more with another in his court, he felt no lesser for it. But yet, he felt undeniably _protective_ of the girl.

Had she wormed her way in so quickly? No, certainly not. He merely coveted her gifts for their secrets and her body for he had not had it for himself yet. She was an inoffensive and enjoyable companion and made for easy and deeply amusing conversation. Fondness he felt for many in this world, it was not as uncommon as many may think. She could perhaps become a friend and ally. A useful one, at that.

"My lord?" Lyon questioned at Vlad's long silence.

"Your warning is heeded and understood. I will talk to her about curtailing her roaming about the castle. Thank you." Vlad waved his hand, dismissing the tall statuesque creature from his study before sinking into his muddled thoughts.

* * *

The following night and Alice arrived, promptly as scheduled in his study. This time, her dress was a deep purple, accented in shades of blue. It was beautiful and set off her eyes. This time, he felt no need to withhold his compliment. "You look lovely this evening, my dear," he told her with a small smile.

"Thank you," she smiled back to him, and the slight pink to her cheeks was more than enough reward for him. He stood up from his chair, and she eyed him curiously. "And you are not wearing your cape."

"Hm, I thought perhaps it hid too much of my physique," he teased her for her errant thoughts the day prior.

She grinned at his playful repartee. "Yes, yes, you can hear my thoughts, I am so terribly proud of you. It is cheating to rely on that to know when a girl appreciates what she sees."

"I did not need to hear your thoughts to know," he responded with a smirk.

Instead of looking appalled, or blushing, or making some lewd advance, Alice laughed. She enjoyed his flirtatious humor for what it was. She accepted his riposte and conceded the bout with a flourish and a bow at the waist as if to say 'touche, and here I am.'

It made him want to crush her up against the wall, kiss her until he robbed her of her breath and to take her, right then and there. None of that registered on his face. She had asked he wait. And so, he would. He was no beast, he felt no need to force a woman to his bed. And besides - she was so playful, so open with her desire for him. He knew his patience would be rewarded.

"So! What is on the docket today, my Lord?" she said at him, using his title teasingly.

"I would like to witness the extent of your power," Vlad responded, ignoring her attempt to goad him. He walked up to her and noticed she did not tense when he did. While she may not 'trust' him, she certainly no longer doubted his intentions.

"The 'extents of my power.' You mean the physics of it, then?" Alice asked curiously.

"Yes. I suppose I am curious about the effect it has on matter when it is… an incomplete transmission."

Alice laughed. A black gate opened in space beside her, and she walked through it without any other commentary. It did not close behind her, and Vlad wondered if he was meant to follow. Walking up to it, he paused, unsure.

A hand re-entered the portal from the other side, took his wrist, and he allowed her to pull him through.

* * *

This man was so _adorably impossible._ As he stepped through the gate onto the other side, he watched him take in his surroundings. She had only brought him maybe a few miles from his castle - still well within the corrupted forest that surrounded it. The looming, archaic and foreboding structure cut a drastic silhouette against the night sky behind.

Towers and impossible architecture twisted up into the sky like jagged, broken claws against a bloody moon. It was a sight meant to terrify. It was awe-inspiring and beautiful in its abject horror.

"Has anyone ever told you, you are a bit melodramatic?" Alice said to Vlad who stood beside her, having finally stepped through her gate at her urging.

At his silence, she looked up at him, to find him looking down at her with an arched eyebrow. He looked back up at his castle, squared his shoulders, and tried his best to look dismissive. "Perhaps."

Alice laughed and nudged him in the arm with her elbow. It drew a smirk out of the man, who, despite his best attempts, could not keep his annoyance with her for longer than a few moments. It was part of the reason she found him so alluring - he seemed, at least for now, to enjoy her antics.

"Why bring us here?" Vlad asked.

"If you want me to destroy something, I figured better it be a tree and not a part of your home," she pointed out dutifully.

"Touche, my dear," he replied. He then gestured for her to continue.

Alice held out her hand and summoned a gate, bisecting a nearby oak in half. The gate appeared fully-formed, some twenty feet in diameter. She watched as the top portion of the tree plummeted through the hole, leaving the bottom half where it belonged.

A matching gate, which she summoned some hundred feet away, had appeared at the same moment as the first. The top half of the tree crashed down through the hole, smashing to the ground in a heap, the branches bouncing as they recoiled from the impact.

Vlad let out a 'huh,' as he watched the tree tumble over itself as it rolled to a stop down a small embankment.

"If I summon a gate inside of any kind of matter, it slices it in half. Water rushes through, as does air or any other gas or liquid. But any solid matter is bisected. If I were to slice it length-wise, both halves would drop to the ground and travel nowhere," Alice explained with a proud smile.

The wheels in his head were clearly whirring, as he was putting together what he saw. "Fascinating…"

Alice grinned, enjoying the chance to 'show off' a little. "I have another trick, as well."

"Oh?"

Alice summoned another gate, this time hovering between two trees. She gestured her hand and sent the gate _moving_ through the grove. As it passed through the trunks, what entered the gate vanished, smashing to the ground with the remainder of the first wooden victim. The trees, now missing entire portions of their middles, toppled over down onto their stumps after hanging for a moment until gravity caught up. It was through a perfectly circular hole had been bored out of the center of the forest. Namely because, well, it had.

When the sound of the forest collapsing in on itself died down, she looked up at him and grinned at the look of wide-eyed astonishment on the vampire's face. She assumed he did not have that expression frequently.

After a very long pause, he spoke once more. "...I see why you brought us outdoors for this demonstration."

Alice laughed again and leaned herself up against his arm. It was a casual gesture, and she wasn't quite sure if it was a welcome one for the vampire - but when he instead draped the arm around her shoulder and pulled him against her side, her concerns were wiped away.

"I assume your gift does not care for whether or not the matter you interrupt is living or otherwise conscious?" Vlad asked curiously.

Alice smiled up at him. "Are you worried I'll take your arm off?"

"No."

Alice tilted her head a little, curious at the way he said it. It had only been one word, but there was deep meaning in it. Perhaps it was the link they still shared, with her blood still in his body. There was a strange kind of dread in him. "Are you worried about my safety?"

Vlad went silent, staring off at the forest, still settling and creaking, limbs snapping as the weight of the destroyed trees were still settling. She watched the muscle in his jaw twitch.

"People tend to take things from you, don't they?" Alice asked, quietly. Clearly a sensitive subject, she watched him visibly wince. "I'm sorry, I-"

"No. It is quite alright. Our connection works both ways. And if I am to ask for honesty from you in the questions I ask, then I should be expected to return the favor." Vlad sighed. "And I cannot fault you for observing the truth. Yes, Alice. I have watched all I have ever known be taken away from me. Either by man, by fellow monsters, or by time itself. Even these stars that burn above us are not the ones that shone when I was born. I worry for traitors that wait in the wings, and for your dubious distinction of both being a creature of great power, and... "

Alice listened to his speech in awe, and only spoke when he trailed off. "And…?"

He did not look down to her as he finished his sentence. "Interesting to me."

'Interesting.' He was using her own word against her. That was how she had explained her fascination with him that had driven her to speak to him, after all. That was fair. Alice felt such pain coming off of him and it didn't take a weird, pseudo-psychic link, either. It was written plainly across his sharp features.

Alice hugged him. Just wrapped her arms around him, and hugged herself to his side. Vlad looked down at her then, the gesture snapping him out of his darkened thoughts. "I can handle myself, Vlad. I promise you. I'll be alright. And I won't wander around your castle anymore, not without you around. Better 'safe' than 'sorry,' even if 'safe' is _painfully_ boring."

A hand settled on her head, stroking her hair once, before settling at the base of her neck, tangling his long fingers into her curls. "Thank you, Alice."

She suspected it was for more than just her promise to stop cavorting about his house unchecked and she smiled. After a long pause, he spoke again. "Is there anything else about your gift that may provide for me furtherance of my research?"

Yes. There was. But…

"Alice?" he questioned, sensing her reluctance and hesitation. Damn this link of theirs!

She pushed away from him and took a step back, slipping out of his grasp. He let her go, watching her with unrestrained curiosity. Alice sighed and turned away from him, clasping her fingers on the back of her neck and letting the weight of her arms stretch her head downwards. She shut her eyes.

"Is it in regards to the scars you bear? They do not trouble me," he assured her.

"It is not about the scars," she said quietly, feeling her shoulders tense. "I've long since stopped being ashamed of them."

"Is it about the man who gave them to you?"

Alice sighed. "No. Not exactly."

"Then… you do not yet know if you can trust me with the whole of it," Vlad rightly observed. "There is more you have not revealed, and you worry that either it will… incense in me a desire to control you, or… create in me some manner of disgust towards you?"

"The former, not the later," Alice let her hands drop to her sides as she turned to look up at him. She had to decide whether or not to 'let him in.' The last time she 'let someone in,' it went… horribly wrong. "I'm sorry for hiding things from you-"

"Do not be," Vlad interrupted before she could continue. "You would be a blind fool to tell me all your secrets. Am I to demand your whole life be laid bare before me, as though it were somehow my given right? No. It is your tale to tell."

Alice stepped into him once more and going up on her toes, she pulled him down into a kiss. God _damn_ this man. God _damn_ him for saying all the right things!

After she ended the kiss, Vlad chuckled against her lips and murmured. "God has damned me for many things, but never for that."

Alice shut her eyes and let herself sink back to her feet, and rested her head against his chest. He stroked her hair gently as if trying to console her. Or convince her that it was alright. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll tell you everything I know for certain. But I need to… get some things in order first."

"Of course."

"Namely, I need to buy a bottle of whiskey," she muttered into his chest.

Vlad laughed and held her tighter against him. "Why not simply _steal_ one, my little larcener?"

She slapped her hand against his chest. He had successfully snapped her out of her mood - the same as she had done for him minutes prior. He snatched her wrist in his hand, and when she went to playfully swipe at him with the other, he caught that as well.

Before she knew it, her wrists were folded behind her back, and he had hefted her up, pressing her against his chest and at far more of an equal height with him. It was startling, being up off her feet, and caught entirely in his grasp. Transferring both of her wrists into one hand, the other cupped her jaw and tilted her head back so that he might lean down and kiss her jawline, slow and sensual.

"And if I do _not_ suddenly covet you as a prisoner or to parse you into jars for my own ends… what will be my reward?" he purred against her.

Alice shuddered and let her eyes slide shut as he kissed his way to her ear, and she had no words with which to respond. She could only melt against him, the strength in his frame, the sensation of him against her. His cool breath pooled against her cheek as he whispered. "For I feel in you the same closed door as I did yesterday… I assume the topic that keeps you from surrendering to your desire of me is _not_ girlish fear or ignorant modesty…"

"Reward, huh?" she managed to summon as he slowly trailed the touch of his lips back towards hers. "I'll see what I can do…"

Vlad was trying to assure her, in quite simply the most phenomenal way she could imagine, that whatever she could possibly show him would not change his mind. That it would not make him want to find a way to have her power for his own.

As he kissed her, she tried to push away the thought that rolled through her head like thunder. Vlad may _think_ himself above such things.

 _But he was going to be wrong._

* * *

Alice pulled the little notebook out of her pocket, drew a dash beneath the last block of text, and began to write.

 _London, March 5th, 1866. Loki in flat on 5th street. Went to Vlad's castle. Traveled to cliffs of Dover._

Alice paused for a long time, looking at the block of text. What the hell was she supposed to write?! 'Let him bite my neck and drink my blood. Made out until I passed out.' She sighed.

 _Awoke in an abandoned cabin some hours later, after dawn. March 6th, 1866. Once dark, returned Vlad to castle. Stayed for several hours, returned to London, March 6th, 1866. Loki in flat on 5th street._

Alice sunk down onto her sofa. Loki, still a little cranky that she had missed his evening snacks, curled up on her lap. She always kept food out for him, but he _did_ so much enjoy his treats. "Well, it's gone from 'stupid' to 'worse,'" she said to her cat, as she petted the animal, drawing purrs out of him as he curled into a ball on her. "I think I'm developing a crush," she laughed at herself. "For _Vlad Dracula. The_ Dracula. He just… he isn't anything like I would have expected, and… he seems to enjoy my company. I guess that's really all it takes huh? All it takes is for someone to smile at me, pretend they might _actually_ like me, and I'm wrapped around their little finger. God, I really am pathetic, aren't I?"

Alice looked down at the thin scar on her arm. Vlad likely thought she turned him down because of those. There was no way he could possibly understand the real reason behind her stall tactic. How on Earth could he possibly even begin to guess?

"I haven't even told him about William. About what he did. He's smart enough to guess that much, I suppose. He's seen this," she held up her scar to the cat, who couldn't care less. "I haven't shown him the rest. When I do… I'll have to tell him the rest, won't I?"

She wondered if he was going to be angry at her - for holding back. For keeping the _full_ truth from him. Alice hoped Vlad would understand. Hoped that he was different, and might realize why she didn't tell him the brunt of it. "It's going to get complicated, Loki. _Very_ complicated. But if I don't try, I'll be alone. Forever. I don't think I can take that. I think I'd lose my mind."

Picking her phone up off of her coffee table, she swiped through the apps until she reached her music player. Hitting shuffle, she smiled at the classical music that came drifting over her speakers.

Striking a new underline in her notebook, she started the next block of text.

 _Took Loki to New York apartment, September 5th, 2018. Ended day there._

Things were going to get _very_ complicated.


	8. Chapter 8

A storm had made its way into the valley in which his castle was currently located, the sound of thunder rolling against the hills accentuating the constant patter of rain against the windows of his study.

It, combined with the crackle of his fireplace, lulled Vlad deep into his thoughts. Memories of older days - of times gone by. Whispers of old friends, old _family._ Ghosts. And like all of his thoughts of late, they swirled around his newest spectre: Alice.

' _People tend to take things from you, don't they?'_ she had asked him. How easily she had seen the truth in him. How quickly she could read him. He felt no need to hide from her - it had proven to be a pointless endeavor to try, as of yet. She met him without scorn at every turn, with only a look of compassion and a desire to pull him free of the morass of his dark thoughts and memories. Vlad would take her hand and let her lead him from his sorrow, however fleeting it may be.

For she, like all things in his life, was to be marked in brevity. Even his stars had faded and changed - for what good could she stand against the enormity of his reality?

For he would _never_ die.

The void would not come for him.

His eyes drifted open at the realization he was not alone. How long had the presence been in the room with him? He had been deep in thought, indeed, to let someone sneak into his chamber. Although, upon seeing who it was - leaning against the jamb of the window, gazing out at the storm, perhaps it made perfect sense.

For as if she were the devil, his thoughts had seemed to summon her here. "Good evening, Alice," he greeted the girl. She wore a long dark green coat, patterned in shades of blue and maroon. It reached the floor at her feet, and it hugged her frame far tighter than the clothing she usually wore. As though she were not wearing so many customary layers of fabric underneath. It was curious, but… enticing, all the same. He preferred her without so much flounce, he realized.

Vlad did not stand from his chair - for upon her beautiful features was an expression he had yet seen from her: grief. He had no desire to see it closer. And if she was as he was beginning to expect, she would require some distance from him, for what she was about to say.

Tonight, he was to have the truth of it all.

* * *

"What is the first thing you remember, Vlad?" she asked him, leaning her head against the side of the window jamb. She wasn't watching the valley below - it was too dark to see - but instead the slide of raindrops down the glass as the wind of the storm blew them into the panes.

"You are asking how old I am?"

"I suppose. I figured you may not remember it in years."

"Hm. You are correct, I do not. For when I was born a mortal man, time was not kept in such strict record," Vlad said thoughtfully. After a pause, he continued. "I have walked the hanging gardens. I have seen the statue of Zeus where he rested in Olympia. But I stood beside Khufu as _we_ designed his great pyramid, I witnessed its construction. And I was a monster then, a holder of great secrets… I was old, even then…"

Alice did not turn to look at him and didn't seem to react to his words that would be shocking to so many. There was some part of her that understood - that instead felt such sorrow for him. He had what all men wish for - immortality - and had learned first-hand how foolish a desire it really was.

She reached out and placed her fingertips against the glass of the window. It was cold to the touch. "Humans must be little more than this to you."

"The storm?"

"No," she clarified. "The raindrops. Fleeting in their individuality. Overpowering in their numbers, but so… _short_ in their existence. So easy to see them for what they are, but only for a moment, before they simply… slide away."

Vlad was silent for a very long time before he spoke. "Yes," he responded, and the weight in that one word almost crushed her. "You can comprehend how I see the world. Why it is I am the way I am. That is… a rare trait."

Alice shut her eyes and let her hand drift from the glass to rest upon the stone sill of the window. "I had a friend once, for many years, who berated me for owning a pet. Claimed to me, again and again, that they were a waste of time and money. I thought he was simply callous - unfeeling - to not understand the love and joy a companion like that may bring. But it was not until my cat grew old and died, and when I saw him share in my pain, that I understood. He rejected such things for he could not cope with the loss. I thought him empty inside. But it only for the sorrow was too much for him. And he will live out his life in a normal span of time. For you…" Alice opened her eyes again, watching the droplets slide down the glass, joining as one and becoming indistinguishable by the time they completed their short journey to the bottom. "You do not seem to shun… friendship. Yet you, as you say, have lost - and _will lose -_ everything. How do you not lose your mind? How do you not become the monster they all think you are, cold and cruel and dead?"

"You think me not those things?"

"I know it," Alice sighed. "You have lived enough that you have been all those things and more, I suspect. A man of… thousands of years of life has been the savior and the devil himself. But I do not see in you a man who is cruel - but perhaps one who has been made so, from time to time."

Alice heard him shift in his chair and the sound of his footfalls on the heavy carpet as he crossed to her. He could move silently if he wished to - but it seems he did not want to startle her.

His hand stroked her hair gently away from her face, as Vlad drew in to stand next to her. "I have been all things in my life… you are correct. For many years, I have wallowed in the emptiness of my heart. For centuries - longer than a man should live - I have felt _nothing._ But it is as you say… merely the actions of a coward, hiding from the pain. To spend my life devoid of others - _that_ is what would drive me mad. Even as you see now, I surround myself with _noise._ With creatures whose petty squabbles and political airs are as frustrating as they are… a relief to me. They are how I continue to live. It is by the tempo of their desires that I stay sane."

"I was wondering why you kept that woman Carmilla around," Alice muttered.

Vlad chuckled. "You have seen her, have you?"

"Hard not to," Alice turned to look up at him. "She's, as you said, _loud._ But I can understand your meaning. The silence without them would be far worse than whatever trouble they bring."

Alice let her eyes drift shut once more as he curled his fingers to stroke the backs of his knuckles down against her cheek. "So few understand… so few can truly comprehend. You are wise long, long beyond your meager years, my little thief."

Alice took his hand in hers and kissed his palm. His skin was cold against her lips, but she didn't care. Tears stung her eyes, and she let out a wavering breath as she bit them back and kept them from falling. He did not ask what was troubling her - he did not need to. She knew he could feel her doubt and her pain rampaging through her mind, as clear as she did. "I fear I have lied to you."

"I know."

Alice looked up at him curiously.

Vlad smirked. "Do you think I do not know how to read the age in the eyes of another? Just now, I saw a woman who knows what it is to live, and love, and see those you care for, fade and wither and die. I see, here before me, a woman whose years are far more reflected in her soul than a child of _twenty-seven._ "

"It's…" Alice tried to scramble for purchase on her thoughts. Of _course,_ he could see through her. To think that she could lie about her age to a man who had seen so much?! Alice laughed weakly, and sighed, giving up. "It's a complex subject."

Vlad leaned down and placed a kiss against her temple. It was meant to be consoling - affectionate - and it took her breath away. "You have met me with nothing but compassion. I will do the same." Alice winced. "You doubt me?"

"I doubt everyone," she muttered.

"Ah, now you threaten to echo my own mind," he tilted her head up with the crook of a finger underneath her chin. "How many years I have sat in silence, afraid of the pain that others may bring. Forgetting, in my own right, the joy that may walk hand-in-hand with such things. For grief and happiness are sisters and they travel together always."

Alice felt what may have been her heart rip in half. She stepped into him suddenly and hugged him. Once more, he knew precisely what to say. Vlad chuckled and wrapped his arms around her in return, and she felt him press a kiss to the top of his head. "Now, out with it. You are driving me up the wall with all this anticipation."

Alice laughed and gently stepped away from him. She needed some space for this story - for all of it. He seemed to understand, and retreated a step further, to give her some air. "Alright, alright." Taking in a deep breath, she held it for a long moment before letting it out, steeling herself. If Vlad could find the strength to leap off the cliff of 'human connection' again, and again, for _thousands of years…_ she could suffer it once more. "I trusted someone once before."

"The man who gave you the scars," he presumed.

Alice nodded. She rolled up the sleeve of her coat, looking down at the thin scar on her arm. "His name was William Barker. He fancied himself a sorcerer of the 'dark arts.' He, like all great fools, hunted immortality and power. I… came across him the same way I did you. I dreamed of him, many times. Sitting in his home, working on his projects. In one dream, though… he seemed to almost see _me._ He reached out to me - and I knew I had to meet him." Alice paused and then sighed. "I loved him. I trusted him. We were together for several years, as he worked to discover the nature of my gift. At first, I agreed to these surgeries of his. These experiments. As he tried to tap into the source of what I was."

Alice traced the thin mark on her arm with her fingertips as she remembered the day she received it. "But he wanted to do more and more, and one day I refused." Alice shut her eyes and shook her head. "I can still feel the sting of the needle in my thigh." Alice paused for a long time as she struggled for the resolve to finish the story. He waited patiently, and to his credit, did not push her. "I woke up two years later."

That pulled a hiss of air through his nose. The first time he reacted to her tale. It made her turn her back to him. Because if she looked at him - if she saw _whatever_ he might have on his features - sorrow, anger, pity, amusement, it didn't matter - she'd lose the strength to continue.

So she went back to the window and rolled her sleeve back down. "He kept me in a medically induced coma. I can be kept still, Vlad… But I must be drugged and kept so delirious and weak that I cannot use my power. I don't remember anything of that time. When he brought me out… it wasn't because he did not wish to continue his work. But because he _missed_ me. In his own right, in his own _sick_ and impossible way, he loved me, Vlad." Alice leaned heavily against the wall and used it to support her. "He begged for forgiveness. He swore he could not stand the agony of my absence. That talking to a corpse was not the same. He called himself a fool, and he fell to his knees at my feet, _pleading_ and crying. I could barely move. I was atrophied and weak, and I remember him, kneeling there, weeping… begging me to absolve him of his crime."

Vlad was silent - thankfully. He was a smart man and knew not to interrupt her. To give her the time to let her story hang in the air. "I killed him. In the face of his repentance, his sorrow, his agony, and guilt… I killed him. And _god damn me_ if I haven't… somehow, somewhere, deep in my heart, come to _regret it._ I still miss him sometimes…"

A hand settled on her shoulder, a gentle offering of compassion. "Of course, you do," he finally spoke, his voice deep and thick. "Love comes in many terrible forms, and those who enter our hearts never truly leave them. But he did not deserve your forgiveness. That he has earned it now, is more credit a soul like his has any right to earn."

Alice smiled weakly but still could not find it in herself to look up at him. Instead, she began to unbutton her coat. "I asked you to wait the other night, not because I did not know how to explain my scars. But there is something else I did not know how to show you, for you are… far too intelligent to not question them."

She shrugged out of her coat, and he let out a surprised noise in his throat. Partly for her clothing - black jeans and a dark blue tank-top. She probably looked half naked to him, wearing normal, 'modern' clothes. But it served a purpose. For her took her right wrist in her hand and lifted her arm to examine precisely that which she was avoiding showing him.

Her tattoos.

Swirling colors and imagery - impossible for the year 1866, traced up her arm starting at her mid-forearm. No human in this era had this kind of artwork. Blues and greens and pinks and purples twisted up and around her arm, over her shoulder and onto her back where it disappeared from his view. Images of a purple cat with a fiendish and far-too-wide grin. A queen in red and one in white. Cards and soldiers, mushrooms and a great caterpillar with a hooka. A little blonde girl in a blue dress.

"I did not know how to explain this to you… without telling you the truth. Without saying to you that, in my own timeline, I am eighty-six years old. I was born… in 1932, in New York City. My father went off to fight in the war - a great human war that has not even happened on Earth yet for you - and died. My mother went shortly after because of grief and the bottle. I was orphaned at the age of three. The rest I told you… was true. Just… missing context."

"You were born… _when?"_ Vlad asked, tracing his fingers up the tattoos on her arm, following the swirls of blues and greens as they wound their way up her arm in their visual depiction of her favorite novel - the character whom she named herself after, all those years ago. Here, in 1866, the book was only a year old. Then, it had been a well-loved book she had carried with her and cherished for decades. She still had it - that original copy of hers.

Alice took a step back away from Vlad, and he let her go. She slung her coat back on but didn't bother to button it. Opening a gate in space next to them, she finally looked up at Vlad. His eyes were wide, his expression a muddled one of confusion and awe, of astonishment and what lingering sympathy remained from her story.

"If you follow me, you'll understand. But if you don't… you'll be happier." Alice sighed. "If you don't, this is goodbye. And my apologies." Alice turned and stepped through the gate, leaving him there.

* * *

Vlad had listened to her tale with rapt interest. Her tale of pain and betrayal was unique in its nature but certainly not in the familiar agony that it brought her. He sympathized with her - and would have kissed away the tears if she had let them fall. But she wished to take her past in stride, and as she felt no shame over her scars, bore the story with the same dignity and acceptance. It was a strength that he could not help but appreciate in her.

The confession that she regretted her choice to kill the _worm_ who had taken such liberties against her - that she still missed him - was an honest one, and he was honored to have heard the admission. Many would feel too much shame or anger over those past events to have come to understand their own turmoil in such a way.

All of that story, all of that past, he would have soothed from her with ease. Taken from her that grief and shown her that the marks upon her body did not trouble him. It was not the result of scalpel and knife over which she was concerned over his reaction - but what _else_ decorated her skin.

The ink she bore. The artwork like a tattoo, but far too precise, far too skillful to be _possible._ Alice was correct. If he had seen such a marvel, he would have suspected that something else was at work. What the colors depicted upon her skin, made little sense to him. Fantastical creatures and strange, exaggerated forms. Whimsical and strange. He barely had any time to take them in for what they were - or follow the curling lines of ink over her shoulder to her back, to see where they may lead - before she spoke to him the truth she had denied him until now.

Not her age - no, that did not surprise nor trouble him. The date of her birth was _impossible._ For while he may not notice the passing of the years in the same fashion as a mortal, he knew what century in which he resided!

Her clothing had been bizarre, what she wore beneath her long coat - strange and foreign to him. The ink… the voice she spoke with inside her mind. But before he could ask her questions, anything more than a dumbfounded confirmation of the year in which she claimed to have been born, she was gone.

And her words…

If he were to stay here, he would never see her again. He believed her threat. But to follow her - she had promised it to bring him both an understanding of her, and unhappiness, all in the same breath.

As though her absence would not pay him a greater fee.

* * *

Alice counted the seconds as though they were hours, standing on the other side of that gate. The warm air felt nice, after the perpetual chill that seemed to fill Vlad's home, burning fireplace or not. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her trenchcoat and waited. Alice would leave the gate there for a minute, and then close it, and that would be that. It would be goodbye.

Looking down at her feet, she shuffled her shoe into the sand there, trying to distract herself from the misery she felt pulling at her. Memories of William had hurt. The reminder that she regretted killing him, in some strange way. The fear of rejection, or worse - what was about to happen if he followed her.

Movement in the corner of her eye made her lift her head. She did not quite sure if it was relief or dread that filled her heart, seeing Vlad step through the gate into where - no. Not _where._ But _when_ she had brought them. It really was both, she decided. Both emotions at once, mashed together into something that rather made her want to throw up.

Vlad's eyes went wide at what he saw before them. He gasped and would have retreated back into the gate into his home if she hadn't closed it already behind him. Vlad staggered, caught his footing barely, and stared, wild-eyed and in a near panic, at what was there upon the horizon.

A half-built pyramid in the desert, under a field of stars he may yet recognize. By his telling, he had been here before long, long ago.

"I can move through more than just space…" she explained the obvious, as she gestured towards the unfinished structure that would come to be known in several thousand years as the Great Pyramid of Giza. "I can move through time."

"So… I see…" he managed after a long pause, still locked rigid and unsure of how to process what lay before him.

"No rush," she walked over towards a nearby palm tree, and leaned against it, folding her arms sullenly across her chest. Even a creature like Vlad would take some time to comprehend what had just happened.

Alice waited. There were only a few people in her life she had revealed the true nature of her gift. Because it always ended the same way: with a flurry of questions. None of which she could truly give good answers to.

Vlad took a slow, careful step forward as if wondering if the image before him were a mirage and might vanish before him as he approached. "Is this a dream…?" he asked softly.

"No. It's real," Alice said and watched him, instead of looking out over the ancient city in which they had appeared. It was beautiful for her, but she had seen it before, once or twice.

"You pass through time itself… as others may open a door in their own homes. You have… all of the Earth laid bare before you," he spoke aloud, as he was piecing it together in his mind.

"Yes."

He paused for a long time before finally turning his crimson eyes to her. "I fear if you were to abandon me here, it would be far more than just an inconvenience."

Vlad referenced their first real meeting, where she pulled him into a glade in Russia. The unexpected joke made her laugh, and there was no way she could possibly put into words how thankful she was for it. Alice smiled at him weakly. Oh, Lord above, how she wanted to cry, and for so many reasons.

He held his hand out to her gently, calling for her to come to him. There was a moment where she was afraid - a flicker of a memory of a past time. William, and the needle he had used to send her into that state. But she swallowed it down. Vlad was _not_ that man. To compare them was doing Vlad a deep injustice.

Stepping away from the palm tree, she put her hand in his, and let him draw her closer to him. He tilted her head up to look at him and let his hand linger against her jaw as he leaned down to kiss her. "My little marvel," he whispered to her as he ended the embrace. "You dread my response to such a revelation. You fear what I may request of you. You wonder if I will turn against you now, in light of the true strength you hold."

Alice could only nod.

"That is why this 'William' of yours did as he chose - to keep you his prisoner. To discern how to control you." Another nod from her and he sighed darkly. He straightened up to look over her at the pyramid behind her. "It is tempting - the idea that one may change their history. To wonder if things could not be altered - 'fixed.' Lives spared or taken, where they were not. But that you still wear the scars of your own misfortune… I think time is a river whose course cannot be changed. That is the unhappiness you sought to spare me, my little thief?"

Alice nodded again. "Especially someone like you, with… so much lost. I was terrified of what you may do or say, since… Traveling around the world freely is one thing. Traveling through _time_ is another."

"Indeed. It is dangerous. I can comprehend why there are many who would covet your gift for their own means." Vlad placed his palm against her cheek and ran his thumb slowly against her. "The past cannot be altered, can it?"

Lydia shrugged. "It's complex, as far as I can tell. You're right. I tried to change my own past and… tried to change things for others. The universe seems to correct itself, and it always manages to be somehow _worse_ than it was before. It has never, _ever_ panned out the way it should."

Vlad watched her studiously and then leaned down to place a kiss atop her head. "I believe you. I will not ask, tempting as though it may be. For I understand, more than anything, that fate has no other path for me but one of pain."

Alice couldn't help but smirk up at him at his melodrama and found that he was smiling faintly down back at her. He had said it for her benefit, it seemed. "Come on. I told you I wanted to tell you that story while drunk, and I am far, _far_ too sober right now." She opened up a gate in space.

"I do not like lingering here either. This is… disquieting for me," Vlad observed, his eyes trailing back to the pyramid upon the horizon. "This is a time that is long dead for me."

She took his hand and squeezed it. "I could have taken you somewhere else. But I felt this was the best way to make my point." He squeezed back, as she led him towards the hole in space.

"It was… a succinct choice, yes." Vlad commented dryly as they stepped through the gate.

* * *

By all the Gods of Heaven and Hell, what was this child? Who was this woman?

Vlad stood before Khufu's great work. One _he_ had helped engineer. But from a time long since past - long since cold and dead in the ground. Yet there he was, impossible and inexplicable, as if in a dream.

The worry and the sorrow poured from her like the rain from the storm. He could feel it burning away next to him by the benefit of their continued link. She dreaded how he would respond. Alice shrank away from him, terrified he would turn upon her and seek her imprisonment as had the fool, William.

How could anyone - _even he -_ seek to contain a creature that could pass through the sands of time?! Did that man not realize that he held the strings to her heart? That the bonds of love were stronger than any shackles he may design? And in his own selfish pride, the man had thrown it all away.

But to stand there, in the sands of Lower Egypt, as he once had… Oh, his imagination ran _wild._ Perhaps he could stop himself from becoming this 'first vampire' and demon. Perhaps he could warn himself away from all of the pain, and loss, and suffering he had ever known.

Had he not though just coached the fledgling immortal at his side, that grief and joy were but sisters? And to welcome one, is to accept the other? Would he not be a hypocrite then, to demand she take him through his history in an attempt to fruitlessly correct the apparent 'unfairness' in his life?

She bore the marks of her own mistreatments and wrongs. If Alice could not correct her own past - or saw the wisdom in avoiding such entrapments - he would listen to the wisdom of such things.

Notwithstanding, to tamper with a timeline as long as convoluted as his… the chaos that might bring, the unintended consequences and wanton destruction? Who was to say that even if the universe might allow for such things, it would not be disastrous?

So, for the time being, until madness overtook him, he vowed to leave her talents at her own discretion. He would trouble her with no questions of how he may re-write his own sordid tale. As she brought them through the gate in space, he found himself standing somewhere foreign and strange.

"Welcome to my home. Well, one of them, anyway… I have many," she explained. The room was crisp and clean and in an architectural style, he had never witnessed before. She flicked a switch on the wall, and electric lights like those he used in his castle turned on. "Welcome to New York City, 2018."

Vlad let out a small 'hum.' That would explain it - to him, he was in 'the future.'

He never had truly considered time as anything other than a universal line, escapable only by insanity. To think of such a concept as, instead, like a tangled web - he would need to spend hours ruminating over such a condition as hers.

A black shape leaped onto the counter beside him, and he looked down at the cat there. It was a beautiful, fluffy thing, with yellow eyes, and it mewed at him curiously. Vlad smirked. "The cat you spoke of?"

"That's Loki."

Vlad raised his hand to the animal, and let the cat sniff his fingers. It let out a small 'prrt' sound and headbutted him. Friendly thing. Much like his owner. Vlad slowly pet the animal, finding her pet for the moment a wonderful and idle distraction from the enormity of what Alice truly was.

"When you would 'leave' to tend to him. You could have returned a moment after you exited, having spent weeks away, and for me, it would have only been an instant?"

"Yeah," she replied. Her language was slowly beginning to match the voice in her head he had heard. The poor girl had been _acting_ this entire time, he realized! Wearing costumes from his era, and speaking to match, as to 'blend in' with the times.

How horrible a way to live, he realized, furrowing his brow. No wonder she chose to dwell within her own era. Alice was pouring herself a drink. "Would you like something?"

"No, thank you," he politely declined. It would take far more alcohol than it was worth for it to have the desired effect. "Why come to me in my year? Why not come to me in yours? Or do I no longer exist in this time?" What an oddly hopeful thought that turned out to be.

"I only can go where I've dreamed before. I can't just… pick anywhere, and go anywhere. I saw you, in your study, in the year 1866. So there I traveled. I've tried looking you up here in this year, but I have no idea where you might be or what's happened," she explained.

"How do you not lose track of where you have been, or _when_ you are?" Vlad asked quizzically. Certainly, he would misplace his belongings on a regular basis.

Alice reached into her coat pocket and procured a tiny notebook. "I write it all down. Just notes. Where I've been, when I've been, where I wake up and go to sleep. … How old I am." Alice opened the notebook and flipped through it idly. "Otherwise I'm afraid I'll lose my cat or forget to feed him."

Vlad looked down at the animal, who was purring loudly and very much enjoying the petting he was receiving. "I am impressed you keep a pet at all. I would fear to become embroiled in some great issue and be unable to travel back to care for him in time-" Vlad realized the foolishness of his words, and sighed. "Ah yes. Time. You know you can always return here, eventually. Forgive me, I am a fool."

Alice laughed. "You're anything but, believe me." She walked back up to the counter and leaned on it, watching him. "That you're grasping this at all… that you're not crying, or having a panic attack, or begging me to do something to 'salvage your life' is astonishing. And as to why I keep a pet? I… need someone to talk to."

"That is your great foil then, is it not? You wear your past with little shame. You do not let it burden you. But you are… very alone. That is what drove you to find me." Oh, how he resembled this little fledgling creature. How he suddenly wished to shelter her from the sands of time.

She was halfway through her drink already. Poor thing.

Alice nodded and looked down into her glass shyly. "I saw a man as alone as I was. No - more so. Mysterious, and terrifying, and inhuman, and… beautiful and alone. I had to know who you were. I had to follow my vision."

Vlad abandoned petting the cat to walk around her counter to her. He crooked a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to meet his. So brazen and yet so unsure. "I am glad you did, my little thief." He kissed her gently, wishing to communicate in that gesture what he may not know how to put to words. That he understood. Perhaps he could not yet grasp the enormity of what she was - and he was no closer to discerning the origins of her power. But he _understood_ what she felt.

When he broke away the kiss, she seemed far calmer. There was more peace in her eyes than when he had started. Good. He smirked. "But there is one thing I need to have answered," he purred darkly. The flush his tone brought to her face was instant and gratifying.

"Oh…?"

"Your tattoos."

"What about them?"

His hand tangled into the fabric of her coat at her hip and he pulled her towards him. She had to set her drink down to keep from spilling it. "Now, you will show me the _rest of them."_


	9. Chapter 9

' _Now you will show me the rest of them.'_

Good god, her mouth went dry at his words. He loomed there next to her - a tall, dark shadow, with his pale skin and crimson eyes that bored into her. How it looked like he was going to devour her, right then and there. Maybe he would. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

"With everything I've just shown you... After everything that I've told you. You still…" _want me?_ She finished silently in disbelief.

"You seem to understand me quite well, little thief," he purred down to her as he stepped in closer to her. "Yet so much seems to deeply escape your notice."

"Like wh-" Alice broke off as his hands rose to touch her face, sharp nails scraping lightly over her skin. She went silent instantly as she both felt her skin go warm at his touch, and goosebumps break out over her shoulders and arms as she shivered.

' _I have wanted you since the moment I laid eyes upon you,'_ he said into her mind. Right. That _stupid_ link. She'd be annoyed if she wasn't too busy being struck in awe of him, as he leaned down to kiss her. His skin was tepid, but not unpleasant, and his kiss brought such a heat out of her that it more than made up for it. ' _Now, unless you wish to blather more pointless doubts upon me… let me see the rest of these tattoos of yours. I am a patient man - but only to a point.'_

Good god, he was… a force of nature. Even when he was teasing her through a psychic connection, all it made her want to do was throw her arms around him and never let him go. Yes - if he was going to devour her, she couldn't think of a better way to go.

Alice took a half a step back away from him, just enough distance to have room to move.

Before she could even second-guess herself, she had shrugged out of her coat and kicked off her shoes. Alice let herself react instinctually for once. To stop over-thinking everything. Or him. Her heart was pounding in excitement, her stomach twisting in knots. She tried to look casual as she tossed her coat over the back of her sofa, but she knew she was failing by the chuckle in his throat.

His hand tangled in her hair, and he tightened his grasp into a fist. She gasped as he pulled, forcing her to turn around so that her back faced him. His goal of steering her completed, he tilted her head forward and released his grip on her hair, to push her long strands over her shoulders so that he could see the artwork that drifted up her arm and over her shoulder, onto her back.

His fingers were tracing the swirls, the imagery, his sharp nails sending her into goosebumps immediately. He let out a small and appreciative 'hmmh' in his throat at her reaction as she shivered at his touch. "What strange creatures you have inked upon you," he murmured, his voice a deep and dusky rumble.

"They're from a book. 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.' About a young girl who travels into a world of bizarre beings and madness."

He chuckled again, and she held her breath for a long moment as he grasped the edge of her tank top. "Which came first? The novel, or you?" he teased, his voice still husky as he pulled her shirt up off over her head.

Vlad's hands returned, running along the skin of her back, tracing the artwork as it drifted along down her shoulders, down her spine, towards her hip. The ink ran across her back diagonally and disappeared down the line of her pants, towards her left thigh. Oh, hell.

"The novel came first," Alice said quietly, finding it hard to form words with his hands wandering her body. "I named myself after the character. I found myself in a world that made little sense. I identified with her."

"I see," he pondered, absent-mindedly, as he explored the skin of her back. The tattoos covered a great deal of the scars left by William. Vlad's fingers lingered on the barely raised marks left behind by his 'research.' "A world of madness, hm? Like what?"

" _Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'"_ she recited a passage from the books she knew by heart. " _'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where -' said Alice."_

Vlad lingered his lips by her ear, his hands drifting lower down her hips. He slipped his fingers into the edge of her jeans, clearly wishing them off. He had asked to 'see the rest,' after all. Alice undid the front of her jeans and slipped them down, stepping out of them, revealing the last of her tattoo. It ran down her leg, curling around it, and ended around her ankle.

" _'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '-so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation,"_ she said, breathlessly, as Vlad dragged his hand slowly up her thigh, nails digging into her skin, threatening to scratch her, but stopping just short. " _'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'"_ Alice finished her quote, just as Vlad turned her head towards him and kissed her deeply, passionately, with such hunger it nearly made her legs give out.

"So you are my Alice, looking to find her 'somewhere?'" Vlad growled low in his throat. "How… _delicious."_ He was still behind her, and she felt him run both his hands up her back, lingering over the inked surfaces, but then finding the clasp of her bra. Even if it was foreign to him, it took him a spare second to undo the clasp and slip the straps off of her shoulders. She let the piece of fabric fall discarded to the ground.

Vlad traced his fingertips along the artwork, making her shiver as he traced the swirls over and over as if trying to make sense of the characters on her back by that alone. His hand slide down her side and traced the hem of her underwear before slipping down her thigh as far as he could reach.

"Would it be easier if I stood on a chair?" Alice teased him for his height even as she tilted her head forward to let him continue his exploration of her.

He chuckled, deep and dark, and she felt the brush of his clothes against the back of her legs as he stepped in towards her. "Perhaps. Perhaps I have another idea that might rectify this problem."

Alice squeaked as suddenly she was airborne. Vlad scooped her up in his arms, and without any other warning, she found herself literally thrown onto her bed. As she opened her mouth to protest, to tell him off for dropping her so unceremoniously onto the plush surface, his lips cut off her words as he kissed her with such a fiery passion that she froze.

His weight shifted as he sat on the bed next to her. Vlad began to wander his hands over her body, tracing her artwork. The press of his nails against her side made her squeak and snapped her out of her stunned inaction.

Vlad chuckled quietly as he broke off the kiss. "Ah, there you are. I worried for a moment you were some shrinking violet, suddenly grown fearful and shy," he teased her.

Alice growled at his goading. "Shut up, you-" she broke off in a moan as his hand grasped the soft skin of her breast and squeezed. It was none-too-gentle, and he let out another thoughtful 'hmm' in his throat as he watched her writhe. Alice's eyes slid shut as he wandered his lips down her jawline, down her neck, lingering only a moment over the two faint puncture wounds on her skin before trailing even lower.

His breath was cold against her skin as he kissed and teased her now with both his hands and his lips. Vlad was learning what she liked - tormenting her skin with his teeth, biting down just hard enough on one of her pink nipples to make her cry out. But it wasn't a cry of pain. Not _exactly._

He explored her for what seemed like minutes - taking his sweet time. And good god, she could bask like this in his affection for the rest of her life, if it weren't for the growing inferno that he was feeding in her.

She needed to taste those lips of his again. Needed to touch him. She sat up, forcing him to do the same, and she leaned up to kiss him where he sat next to her on the bed. He slipped a hand to the back of her neck to cradle her head as he let his tongue dart at her lips, asking for entry.

Alice gave it without hesitation. Felt his cold tongue slip alongside hers, exploring her mouth. He was a conquering army. An overwhelming surge in the ocean - truly a force of nature of a man. He was _not_ shy, and he knew _precisely_ what he wanted. He was a King, after all.

But _god damn it,_ if she wasn't going to get to have some of him for her own.

* * *

Oh, she tasted like heaven. Such warmth, such _heat_ radiated from her body, and he could wallow in it for years if she let him. His little phantom - his little spectral thief - now lay beside him, writhing under his caress.

Even as much as he teased her to goad a reaction out of her stunned silence - she was no shrinking violet as he had said. Far be it. She embraced him - and unlike so many of the women he had over his many millennia, she _understood_ who it was she took into her arms. Truly knew and could fathom his age, his darkness, his inhumanity.

And Alice wanted it. Wanted _him._ She did not fear him. She did not even tremble as he kissed the wound upon her throat, circled his tongue over the marks he had left. Instead, Alice tilted her head away to give him more room. If he wished to take her blood, she would let him have it. It was not trust, per se - it was an acquiescence to his very nature. That whatever he wished from her this night in his arms, he could have it. For she desired it in return.

But what he did not expect, was how that acknowledgment of his nature set off an roiling _need_ in him. A desire he had not felt for another in so very long. She wanted him. _All of him._

How could he deny her?

When her hands urged him to kiss her, he had to remind himself she was - or at least appeared to be - human, and may need to breathe. Vlad let her a few inches as he broke off his embrace, and watched her in rapt fascination as she began to unbutton his vest. Her eyes were dark, lidded, clouded with passion.

Alice undid his vest, and Vlad shrugged out of it for her obediently. He watched, providing her no aid, as she began to work on his shirt instead. She shifted to kneel so that she could lean into him and kiss his skin as it was revealed to her.

The sensation of those hot lips against his cold flesh made him let out a contented and pleasured sigh as he tilted his head back. Small, warm hands finished with the buttons and were now parting the fabric, pushing it off his shoulders. Only then, did he help remove the garment, and tossed it aside.

Alice was now exploring _him_ in return. He could feel her own desire, echoing through their psychic link, though such a method was hardly necessary to confirm what was so very clear. Her touches were not shy, but they were not wanton or lascivious like the succubi who wandered his home. Yet, her desire pulled him in, seduced him and stoked his own like kindling.

Vlad could be a patient, caring lover. He could love as gently as any prince. He could be tender, and sweet, and kind. Alice shifted to straddle his lap, slinging a leg over him to kiss him. As her teeth bit down on his lower lip, he knew that was not how this night was going to go.

And he could not have been happier.

* * *

Alice let out a startled noise as he threw her back down to the bed. At first, she thought she had upset him by biting him - but he followed after her and didn't even give her an inch to think before his lips were on hers again, ravishing her.

His hand grasped the thin fabric of her underwear, and tore it from her, snapping the fabric like it was nothing. His other hand was tangling in her hair, wrapping it around his fingers, and she gasped against his lips as he clenched it in his fist. He knew how to walk the line between pleasure and pain, and she surrendered to it as a cliff diver would to gravity itself.

Alice knew who he was. And god help her, she wanted all of it - all of _him._

And as she felt him press against her entrance, she knew he was going to oblige her.

Vlad broke off the kiss that threatened to steal her very soul away, and his crimson eyes were nearly black in his desire and passion. She wondered if he was giving her a chance to protest - _like hell she would -_ but no. He wanted to watch her reaction as he began to slide himself into her. Alice cried out, nearly drowning out his low moan as he began to fill her. She had lovers in her many years, but _nothing_ like this.

Vlad took his time, and she felt him shudder in his own pleasure. It seemed like forever, drawn on the edge of a bowstring until he was buried in her to the hilt. It was almost too much - it strained and pressed against her end, but that alone almost sent her pitching over the edge of ecstasy. Like everything about Vlad, it walked the line of pleasure and pain. It was agony. It was bliss. She wanted more - no, she _needed_ more.

Vlad chuckled low as if teasing her silent admission. "Very well…"

 _Stupid psychic link!_

He hooked her leg into his elbow and leaned down over her, forcing her legs apart wider and changing his angle. Vlad leaned more of his weight against her, and she cried out sharply, arching her back as the pressure against her sent pangs of just about every sensation possible rampaging through her body.

"Too much?" he teased breathily, his voice a low growl in his chest that vibrated through her.

Alice growled and glared up at him. She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him. Put into her embrace all of the desire, the fire, the need she felt. How she needed him not to hold back. When she parted from him, the dark hunger on his features revealed that the message had been received. "I want all of you," she said to him, barely above a whisper. "So _shut up_ and _do your worst."_

* * *

So alike they were.

Two actors filling the roles that were asked of them. She had spent all her time around him up until this point, pretending to be a woman of the nineteenth century. Wearing false clothes, speaking in a false voice… hiding her gift and her true nature.

And he, pretending to be 'human.' Pretending to be anything but the ancient, ages-old, desolate creature that he was. Each time he took a lover, they would wish upon him a role - an aspect of himself. The gentle prince. The violent King. The monster. The saint. The beast. Even any selfish desires on his part was to read from a script that a lover had handed him.

But not Alice.

Her words did not do justice to what he felt burning inside her mind. This time, the link between them was his blessing and his curse. She did not want him to play a role - did not want him to be what she _expected_ or _hoped_ him to be as a lover.

She wanted _him._

All of him.

And he could feel the truth behind those words. She wanted the man who helped Khufu design his pyramids. She wanted the first vampire - the lonely monster. Alice wanted him to love her however _he_ wanted.

As she writhed beneath him, as he pinned her to the bed with his needs, she was supple and did not fight him. She cried out in pleasure, hands holding onto him and caressing him in return. Her heat surrounded him, filled him, made him feel as though he was alive once more. He felt his heart thudding in his chest, spurred to life by passion and another kind of fulfilled hunger.

Alice was lost in abandon. Lost in _him,_ and she took him with joy. He did not pull the strength from his thrusts as he nearly ravaged her body with his own. He felt her curl her free leg behind his waist in return. Oh, this girl was going to be the _end of him._

If she were the void, he would open his arms and embrace her with nothing but elation in his heart.

How many times he had pushed Alice into the oblivion of ecstasy he did not know. How long he had been tormenting her body, he could not say. He could hardly pay attention, he was so lost in _her_. But she was tiring - her skin glistening in a sheen of sweat as she quivered beneath him. Her blood was pounding in her veins, and the smell of it brought his fangs sliding unbidden from his upper jaw.

"Vlad-" she moaned his name, her chestnut curls like a halo around her head. She was watching him, amethyst eyes glazed in pleasure and passion. Their gaze met for a moment before she turned her head to the side, inviting him to her throat.

 _Oh, Alice…_

That was too much for him. Blood filled his mouth as he returned a bit of himself into her in exchange. His body shuddered, muscles twinging in bliss and ecstasy, finally overcome. Alice had so willingly fed one of his demands and had invited the other, and the act had finally sent him over the edge.

It was not long before he felt her go limp beneath him, her low whimpers of a different kind of pleasure silencing as he had driven her too far past her limit to stay awake. It wasn't surprising. Vlad removed his lips from her neck and licked the wound clean, savoring every drop of her. He would savor every part of this girl that she would let him have.

His little time-traveling spectre. His little thief, whose presence in his life was just as mysterious as it was wonderful.

Sated in every possible way, Vlad shifted if only to pull the blankets up over them. The curtains were drawn tight, and he had no fear of the dawn. The sun would not harm him, especially not with fresh blood in his body. Even if he could leave her - if he were not trapped _in the future_ \- there was nowhere he would rather be.

Alice shifted in her sleep, weak as she was, and nuzzled up against him. Vlad found himself smiling, and wound his arms around her, holding her close. There was a bloom of something in him that he recognized. He had felt it enough times in his five thousand years to see it for what it was. Something just a little to the left of the affection he had come to feel for the impish creature before him.

 _Oh, Alice. There is no ridding of me now._


	10. Chapter 10

Hello everybody!

I'm not dead. I promise. I thought I'd post a quick update (and a shameless plug.) All my spare time has been spent working on publishing my own dark fantasy/romance series. (Featuring a few familiar OC faces, including everybody's favorite, Lyon.)

If you're interested in reading my novel, the first of the six part series is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. doesn't allow links, so just google search "King of Flames by Kathryn Ann Kingsley" and I should pop up.

Thanks again everyone, and I'll be back soon!

-Kat


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